SBF: There were early plans to sell FTX to Binance

SBF testified on Friday that during the early stages of FTX, he had planned to sell the company to Binance, partly because he was worried he would not be able to successfully recruit clients. SBF believed that FTX could be developed into a place specifically for margin traders to provide services, and at that time, there were basically no companies in the industry doing this business, so he expected exchanges like Binance might be interested in purchasing FTX. SBF told the jury that he eventually became confident that he could develop FTX well, even though he believed there was only a 20% chance of success for his exchange. He said, "Considering that the largest exchanges at the time were companies worth tens of billions of dollars, even a 20% chance is a huge opportunity." SBF said FTX's revenue in 2019 was as high as $20 million. By 2021, FTX's daily revenue reached $3 million. (Decrypt) On October 19th, the US Department of Justice hired Peter Easton, an accounting professor at the University of Notre Dame, to track the billions of dollars of funds between Alameda and FTX. The professor testified at the SBF trial hearing that in 2022, FTX used customer funds to repurchase all of the shares it held in Binance, with over $1 billion coming from FTX's customer funds. Easton testified that user deposits were also reinvested in enterprises and real estate, used for political donations, and donated to charities. Previously, in 2019, as part of a strategic partnership between the two companies, Binance invested an undisclosed amount of funds in FTX. Binance CEO CZ stated in a 2022 article that as part of the repurchase, the company received over $2.1 billion in BUSD and FTX's FTT tokens.