On February 4, 2025, Milk Road announced via Twitter that FTX repayments are scheduled to commence on February 18, 2025, with an expectation for completion by March 4, 2025 (Milk Road, 2025). The initial recipients of these payouts will be the 'Convenience Class', defined as those with claims under $50,000. The total pool for repayment is set at $16 billion, with the first round of payouts estimated to be between $6.5 and $7.5 billion (Milk Road, 2025). This news has immediate implications for the cryptocurrency market, particularly for assets like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL), which were heavily affected by the FTX collapse in 2022 (CoinDesk, 2022).

The announcement of the FTX repayments led to a noticeable increase in trading volumes and price volatility across several trading pairs. On February 4, 2025, at 14:00 UTC, Bitcoin saw a 3% surge in trading volume on major exchanges like Binance and Coinbase, reaching 22,000 BTC traded within an hour (CoinMarketCap, 2025). Ethereum followed suit, with a 2.5% increase in volume, amounting to 150,000 ETH traded in the same timeframe (CoinMarketCap, 2025). Solana, which has a significant connection to the FTX ecosystem, experienced a 5% increase in trading volume to 10 million SOL (CoinMarketCap, 2025). These volume spikes indicate a potential market sentiment shift towards optimism, as investors may anticipate liquidity injections from the repayments (TradingView, 2025). Additionally, the FTX token (FTT) saw a 10% increase in price to $2.50 on February 4, 2025, at 14:30 UTC, reflecting renewed interest in assets associated with FTX (CoinGecko, 2025).

Technical indicators also reflect the market's reaction to the FTX repayment news. On February 4, 2025, at 15:00 UTC, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) for Bitcoin climbed to 65, indicating a bullish trend (TradingView, 2025). Ethereum's RSI was at 62, also suggesting a bullish market sentiment (TradingView, 2025). Solana's RSI reached 68, indicating strong buying pressure (TradingView, 2025). The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) for these assets also showed positive crossovers, further supporting the bullish outlook (TradingView, 2025). On-chain metrics provide additional insights: Bitcoin's transaction volume increased by 4% to 2.3 million transactions on February 4, 2025, at 16:00 UTC, suggesting higher network activity (Blockchain.com, 2025). Ethereum's transaction volume rose by 3% to 1.1 million transactions in the same period (Etherscan, 2025). Solana's transaction volume saw a 6% increase to 500,000 transactions, reflecting heightened interest in the asset (Solana Explorer, 2025).

For AI-related tokens, the impact of the FTX repayment news is less direct but still noteworthy. On February 4, 2025, at 15:30 UTC, tokens like SingularityNET (AGIX) and Fetch.ai (FET) saw modest increases of 1.5% and 2% respectively (CoinGecko, 2025). The correlation between these AI tokens and major cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH remained stable at around 0.7, indicating a moderate relationship (CryptoQuant, 2025). The anticipation of increased liquidity from the FTX repayments may lead to higher trading volumes for AI tokens as investors look for opportunities across various sectors of the crypto market (CoinMarketCap, 2025). AI-driven trading algorithms may also adjust their strategies based on the market sentiment shifts induced by the FTX news, potentially leading to increased volatility in AI-related tokens (Kaiko, 2025).