FTT is the native currency of one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges FTX. However, a recent decision by Binance Exchange to liquidate its FTT holdings is almost bank running the FTX exchange, and directly affecting the value of the FTT token. In fact, this has had a negative impact on the general cryptocurrency market, with BTC, ETH and SOL losing more than 4% of their price value.

Nonetheless, let's talk about FTX exchange and the FTT token in general. The FTX exchange is a crypto futures and over-the-counter crypto trading platform. This exchange serves over 1 million customers, comprising both of retail and institutional investors. An MIT graduate Sam Bankman-Fried alongside his classmate Gary Wang founded the exchange in 2019 with the aim of generating as much money as possible. The funds, according to Sam, were going to be used for charitable causes through the principle of effective altruism.

The platform is focused on deploying advanced trading features for professional investors, as well as delivering an intuitive user interface for beginning traders. FTX exchange managed to raise over $900 million in 2021 when its valuation hit a whopping $18 billion. The FTT token is native to the FTX exchange and is modelled on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Therefore, consider FTT as a token rather than a cryptocurrency coin.

FTT token has been performing generally well over the last few months until the bank run issue came along, and Binance decided to liquidate its holdings of the token worth about $500 billion. This saw the coin drop by at least 70% from a $20 price tag to nearly $5. Presently, there is a lot of sentiment online and no one exactly has any clue what direction the coin could take. Binance's CEO announced they were planning to buy the nearly liquidated FTX exchange. A decision and an act that could reverse the plummeting FTT token price and somewhat calm the general bearish trend affecting the market. However, there are still fears of a similar Terra (LUNA) altercation that most remain pessimistic the price of FTT could drop below 0. The fact is most holders feared the Binance sell-off of its FTT tokens would cause massive downward pressure. Hence resulting into most investors selling their FTX tokens. There is still much to speculate about the direction of the coin, and therefore we advise careful analysis of the market. New traders ought to seek expert technical analysis and evaluation of the prevailing fundamentals.

The 1-day Coinmarketcap price chart for FTT/USDT token indicating the massive drop from $20 to $4

FTT Breakdown

The team behind the FTX exchange is highly professional. The exchange is also backed by Alameda Research, a quantitative trading platform founded and run by Sam Bank Fried. This platform covers many industry niches in the cryptocurrency trading sector, these include collateral, maintenance margins, product listing and liquidation process. Furthermore, the exchange has a secondary interest in development cycles, and has therefore enabled teams to deploy crypto trading platforms at a rapid development pace.

FTT token, which runs on the FTX exchange is a deflationary token. There are a total 133,025,776.24 FTT that will ever be in supply. The current supply is only 38% of the total supply. Also note that the exchange has eliminated atleast 20 Million FTT tokens through a buy and burn mechanism.

A unique trading feature of the FTX tokens is the ability for traders to open leveraged positions without having to trade margins. Therefore, once a trader shorts Bitcoin on a 3X leverage, they can easily purchase a 3X short BTC by leveraging the FTT token on the FTX exchange.

FTT History

Early technical history shows FTT fell from $1.78 in September 2019 to an all time low of $0.83. By the close of the year, the token gained bullish momentum and ended 2019 at $2.14.

Throughout 2020, FTT remained moderately bullish, and recorded over 169% gains. The coin opened the year at around $2.14 and ended at $5.77.

Came 2021, and the value of the coin spiked from January's $5.82 to May's $61.28. Meanwhile, the second half of 2021 saw a bloodbath engulf the FTT price action causing a 62% drop to $22.79.

Between June and Septemember, the price recovered and FTT set a record all time high of $85.02. The bullish momentum was however shortlived and the price closed the year of 2021 at $38.

FTT token is implemented in the development of leveraged tokens across the FTX exchange. The exchange distributed VIP discounts as FTT tokens, and the amount depends on the amount of tokens each one holds. The token's deflationary mechanism is based on buy backs and burns.