CoinVoice recently learned that on October 4, Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short, revealed in his new book Going Infinite that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) proposed cooperation to Binance founder CZ in early 2019, hoping to introduce the cryptocurrency futures trading platform technology developed by his team to Binance at a price of US$40 million. In this proposal, Alameda Research is responsible for providing technical support, while Binance is responsible for bringing customer and market trust.

After detailed deliberation, CZ decided to reject SBF's proposal and chose to develop a futures trading platform in-house. To this end, SBF turned to independent development, intending to build a futures trading platform that would cater not only to the cryptocurrency community, but also to large professional trading firms such as Jane Street. FTX initially issued 350 million FTT tokens, some of which were offered to employees at a price of 5 cents and some to key cryptocurrency figures, including CZ, at a price of 10 cents. Although CZ and most FTX employees chose to refuse, strong demand from external investors prompted SBF to increase the price of the token from 20 cents to 70 cents. On July 29, 2019, FTT was listed on FTX, opening at $1 and then rising to $1.5. A few weeks later, CZ contacted SBF and proposed to purchase 20% of FTX for $80 million. [Original link]