Did SBF really use FTX traders’ Bitcoin to keep BTC price under $20K?
Bitcoin (BTC) failed to hit $100,000 during the 2021 bull market because defunct exchange FTX kept selling BTC, analysis claims.
In an X (formerly Twitter) post on Oct. 12, Joe Burnett, senior product marketing manager at Bitcoin financial services firm Unchained, joined voices arguing that FTX executives suppressed BTC price strength.
As the trial of former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried continues, new testimony paints a picture of potential market manipulation.
This week, Caroline Ellison, former CEO of affiliated firm Alameda Research, reportedly told the court that Bankman-Fried asked her to sell BTC should its spot price breach $20,000. This was done using FTX customer funds, which neither had the right to deploy.
AUSA: What are these?
Ellison: Notes from a conversation with Sam. I wrote, keep selling BTC if its over $20K.
AUSA: You wrote, FTX may raise. What does that mean?
Ellison: Raise capital by selling equity, to get more money. To investors like MSB, the Saudi Prince
Reacting, Burnett suggested that due to the scale of the operations involved, the entire Bitcoin bull run could have been adversely affected.
“Alameda was insolvent even during the bull market. It appears they used (or ‘borrowed’) FTX customer bitcoin and other customer assets to buy ‘Sam coins’ (FTT, Solana, and Serum),” he wrote, referring to reports that Ellison’s firm had a negative value of $2.7 billion in 2021.
During the bull run of 2021, BTC/USD still reached an all-time high of $69,000; but at the time, predictions called for much larger numbers.
Related: Sam Bankman-Fried blamed Binance for balance sheet leak to media: Court evidence
Among those was the then-popular Stock-to-Flow (S2F) Bitcoin price model, the creator of which — the
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