It certainly was a splashy headline. “New FTX Chief Says Crypto Exchange Could Restart,” The Wall Street Journal declared on Thursday. And boom! Just like that, FTX’s notorious FTT token shot up more than 20% in a matter of minutes. FTX CEO John J. Ray III certainly had some crypto traders excited. “If there is a path forward on that, then we will not only explore that, we’ll do it,” he said in his interview with The Journal. Frankly, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. This is, after all, how chapter 11 bankruptcies are supposed to work. Companies file for chapter 11 when they seek to reorganize their debts, giving them at least some semblance of hope that they can come out the other end alive. That’s different from chapter 7, when companies essentially hang up their skates and liquidate entirely. Ray is saying FTX could hypothetically restart operations because, well, he has to say that. If that’s what will get creditors back more of their money, then so be it. That would of course involve traders coming back to the FTX trading platform, the likelihood of which feels very, very slim. As one finance professor put it to Bloomberg today, “The brand is toxic.” The traders bidding up the price of FTT apparently don’t believe that’s the case. Apparently, neither does Sam Bankman-Fried, even after he’s been charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He celebrated Ray’s comments in a tweet: “I’m glad Mr. Ray is finally paying lip service to turning the exchange back on after months of squashing such efforts!” OK, then