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Crypto Markets Today: FTX Finds $5B, Bitcoin Extends Rally

ALSO: Bitcoin tops $17,500 for the first time in almost a month, while ether held strong above $1,300. Equities closed higher.

Updated Mar 3, 2023, 7:03 p.m. Published Jan 11, 2023, 10:24 p.m.

FTX Logo (Unsplash)

Crypto exchange FTX has recovered more than $5 billion in different assets, not including another $425 million in crypto held by the Securities Commission of the Bahamas, a bankruptcy attorney said during a hearing Wednesday.

This article originally appeared in Crypto Markets Today, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter diving into what happened in today's crypto markets. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

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There's still a sum missing in what is owed to customers and the amount is still unclear, the attorney said.
"We have located over $5 billion of cash, liquid cryptocurrency and liquid investment securities measured at petition date value. [It] just does not ascribe any value to holdings of dozens of illiquid cryptocurrency tokens, where our holdings are so large relative to the total supply that our positions cannot be sold without substantially affecting the market for the token," said Landis Rath & Cobb attorney Adam Landis on FTX's behalf.
The announcement substantially raises the total FTX claims it holds after the company's new leadership said it could only find just over $1 billion on Dec. 20, 2022. The total amount FTX owes its creditors is still unclear. In initial bankruptcy filings, the company's management checked off the box indicating a figure between $1 billion and $10 billion.
Sam Bankman-Fried instructed his lieutenant, Gary Wang, to create a "backdoor" for Alameda to borrow from FTX customers without their permission, Landis said. He added the former CEO created a line of credit worth $65 billion from the exchange to the trading arm.
"We know what Alameda did with the money. It bought planes, houses, threw parties, made political donations. It made personal loans to its founders. It sponsored the FTX Arena in Miami, a Formula One team, the League of Legends, Coachella and many other businesses, events and personalities," Landis said.

Token Roundup

Bitcoin (BTC): Thelargest cryptocurrency by market value was recently trading at the $17,500 level, almost the same from the past 24 hours. In futures trading, the three-month BTC futures listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, widely considered a proxy for institutional activity, are drawing a premium over the cryptocurrency's going spot market price for the first time since FTX went bust. Equities closed higher as traders eyed Thursday’s U.S. inflation report. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite closed up 1.7%, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) were up 1.2% and 0.8%, respectively.

Bitcoin SV (BSV): The native token of the Bitcoin SV blockchain dropped 15% after Robinhood said Wednesday that it will end support for BSV on Jan. 25. BSV’s price fell from $44 to as low as $37 and had risen to $40 as of press time. The Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (Bitcoin SV) blockchain was created in 2018 after a hard fork from the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, which in turn was a hard fork of the original Bitcoin blockchain.

Ether (ETH): The second-largest cryptocurrency recently followed BTC’s direction, trading flat at around $1,340.

Latest Prices

CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) 855.85 +2.6 ▲ 0.3% Bitcoin BTC$89,610.64 $17,563 +106.3 ▲ 0.6% Ethereum ETH$3,135.86 $1,342 +2.3 ▲ 0.2% S&P 500 daily close 3,969.61 +50.4 ▲ 1.3% Gold $1,881 +9.3 ▲ 0.5% Treasury Yield 10 Years 3.55% ▼ 0.1 BTC/ETH prices per CoinDesk Indices; gold is COMEX spot price. Prices as of about 4 p.m. ET

Crypto Market Analysis: Is Bitcoin Heating Up? Looking at On-Chain Data for Clues

By Glenn Williams Jr.

On Wednesday we are looking at a few pieces of on-chain data for signs of hope or concern on the bitcoin BTC$89,610.64 market. Like many things in financial markets, we’ll likely find a bit of both. At stake is whether bitcoin's mini-rally this week above $17,000 is sustainable.

An initial area of potential concern is a recent downturn in new bitcoin addresses. Data from Glassnode shows that higher prices for BTC tend to result in more bitcoin wallets as interest increases, and vice versa.

What may be concerning is the decline in addresses in November while BTC traded relatively flat. This could signal a couple of things:

Markets at the time didn’t yet think bitcoin prices had reached a bottom.
Whether BTC had bottomed, or not, investors felt better opportunities existed elsewhere.