Binance C.E.O. Changpeng "CZ" Zhao reveals plan to sell $529 million of FTT holdings after rumored liquidity trouble from Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX exchange and Alameda Research. Centralization leads to a host of issues for digital assets. Learn more about this partnership here.
Launch, Initial Token Allocation, and Funding
FTT Initial Supply Breakdown (Source: Messari.io)
The launch was via a private sale and distribution started on July 27, 2019.
Token allocation is as stated:
- 31.25 million tokens allocated to the team vesting over a 3-year schedule
- 50 million tokens sold in Round 1 vested over the first 3 months
- 6.5 million tokens sold in Round 2 vested over the first 1.5 months
- 2.8 million tokens sold in Round 3 vested over the first month
As per the FTT whitepaper, the plans for the FTT token raise as of April 2019 were to offer 350 million FTT tokens at a range of prices on a first-come, first-serve basis. The cheapest FTT token was to be offered at $0.10, implying a minimum $35 million market cap.
The original plan was to have the FTT tokens locked up at first and one-third of all exchange fees generated by FTX to be redistributed to FTT. Within six months, FTT tokens were planned to be listed, unlocking users’ demand for FTT.
FTX completed six total funding rounds with over $1.8 billion in funding as of Feb. 2022. The company has successfully undergone a seed round, corporate round, Series B, and Series C, the latest of which raised $400 million.
Liquid Supply Curve for FTT (Source: Messari.io)
FTT’s total addressable market is strictly impacted by the growth of FTX. As such, the total addressable market of FTX must be considered.
FTX grew from $7.2 million in revenue generated in 2019 to over $85 million generated in 2020. Revenues increased a further 840% in 2021. FTX 24H peak trading volume grew from $7 billion in 2020 to $21 billion in 2021. Annual crypto volume grew from $27 billion in 2019 to $385 billion in 2020. As of January 2022, FTX was valued at $32 billion, up from $25 billion in Oct. 2021.
Current Token Supply
Current Token Distribution
The FTT token distribution remains highly concentrated as of Q4 2022 with ~90% controlled by whales, entities that hold more than 1% of the token supply. Token distribution and decentralization aren’t nearly as important for a utility coin controlled by a centralized company, but it still presents risks that “whales” could mass sell, thereby tanking the price in the process or attempting to manipulate the price to their advantage.
