<p><em>Update: Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried responded on <a href="https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1616120980669366278">Twitter</a> to John Ray III's plan to restart the exchange.</em></p> <p><em>"I'm glad Mr. Ray is finally paying lip service to turning the exchange back on after months of squashing such efforts! I'm still waiting for him to finally admit FTX US is solvent and give customers their money back," Bankman-Fried said. </em></p> <hr /> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">The new leader of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX said he has set up a task force to explore restarting FTX.com, The Wall Street Journal reported. </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">In an interview, FTX executive John Ray III said of the prospects of a restart: "Everything is on the table."</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">The paper also reported that Ray would look into whether reviving FTX’s international exchange would recover more value for the company's customers than his team could get from liquidating assets or selling the platform. </span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s2">Earlier this week, FTX <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/203026/ftx-debtors-identify-5-5-billion-of-liquid-assets-in-herculean-effort"><span class="s3">identified $5.5 billion</span></a> in liquid assets, part of what Ray called a “Herculean effort” to untangle the firm’s finances. </span><span class="s1">FTX filed for bankruptcy in November, and U.S. authorities brought charges against its former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried soon after. </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Ray and Bankman-Fried are at odds over the exchange’s bankruptcy filing. Bankman-Fried has said it was a mistake for FTX to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and lambasted Ray’s process in handling it. Ray said that Bankman-Fried's comments were “unhelpful and self-serving.” </span></p> <p class="p3"><span class="s4">“We don’t need to be dialoguing with him,” Ray said in the interview. “He hasn’t told us anything that I don’t already know.”</span><span class="s5"> </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Bankman-Fried responded in a text message to the WSJ saying that the comment was shocking “from someone pretending to care about customers.”</span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s1">The Justice Department has accused Bankman-Fried of using billions of dollars in customer funds of FTX customer funds for his personal use, to make political contributions and to repay billions of dollars in loans owed by the crypto hedge fund founded by Bankman-Fried called Alameda Research. </span><span class="s1">The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission also brought their own <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/194509/sam-bankman-fried-charged-with-fraud-over-ftx-collapse"><span class="s3">charges</span></a>. </span></p> </span><span class="s1"> </span></p><br /><span class="copyright"><p>Disclaimer: The former CEO and majority shareholder of The Block has disclosed a series of loans from former FTX and Alameda founder Sam Bankman-Fried.</p> <p>© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.</p> </span>