These coins will be sold at the FTX trial

Trustees of FTX are taking advantage of the recent crypto rally and sending several altcoins to exchanges, as on-chain data show.

About $3.4 billion in various cryptocurrencies trustees were able to salvage a year after the collapse of FTX. Following a court ruling in September, they now want to sell them. The goal is to reimburse customers with the proceeds. In this way, up to 90 percent of the lost funds could be returned to their rightful owners. To achieve this, however, FTX must achieve the "best possible result," as required by the insolvency court. In other words, generate high proceeds from the sales and preferably without the respective cryptos collapsing under selling pressure.

It was therefore to be expected that those in charge would wait for a market rally to sell during a period of strength. As on-chain data shows, this seems to have happened during Bitcoin's rise to the $35,000 mark. In recent days, large amounts of various altcoins have apparently moved from FTX wallets to crypto exchanges. Among the presumably divested tokens are logically the strongest altcoin performers, Solana and Chainlink. What are the implications for the respective coins and the crypto market as a whole? And will more sales follow?

Sales pressure of $59 million

The blockchain analytics project "Lookonchain" counts coins worth $59 million that FTX recently put into motion. Much of that, about $25 million, consists of Solana coins (SOL). FTX and its trading firm Alameda Research were big promoters of the ecosystem and own just over a billion dollars worth of SOL. Last week, they added another 5.5 million SOL tied up, which will not be sold for the time being.

In addition to nearly 5,000 ETH (about $8.7 million), several DeFi coins were apparently for sale, including dydx (DYDX), Uniswap (UNI), Maker (MKR), Lido Finance (LDO) and Aave (AAVE). However, the amounts are still limited, so the amounts sold so far should have little impact on altcoin prices. Also, Solana's share price so far seems unfazed by the moves and is above the psychologically important $30 at the time of writing.

Will more sales follow?

Surprisingly, there are currently no reports of FTX selling Bitcoin stock, even as the leading crypto-currency has reached its highest level since May 2022. If the recent performance continues, it seems only a matter of time before the trustees divest these coins as well. Indeed, FTX holds BTC worth $560 million. However, price declines due to sales seem unlikely due to Bitcoin's relatively high liquidity and trading volume. In the past, however, for concerns about sales pressure by FTX stocks.

The company in charge of selling the coins, Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital, was therefore instructed to liquidate a maximum of $200 million in cryptos per week. So this week, sales of up to $141 million would be possible. More sales could be an obstacle to the recovery of prices in the altcoin market in the coming weeks. After all, FTX still has plenty of "ammunition." The wallets that Lookonchain tracks are still holding $619 million of crypto assets. Among these are $100 million in ETH and $33 million in MATIC.