Bankman Fried's FTX is now in discussions to acquire Bithumb
The cryptocurrency trading platform FTX, which was co-founded by the billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, is reportedly in advanced talks to buy the South Korean company Bithumb, according to a person familiar with the subject.
According to the individual, who asked not to be named since they were talking about something sensitive, the companies have been in conversations for several months now. A spokeswoman for Bithumb has stated that they are unable to confirm anything at this time.
The FTX spokeswoman that we reached out to declined to respond. According to a person who spoke on the condition of anonymity to Bloomberg, the two exchanges have been negotiating the arrangement for a number of months now.
As of the time this article was being published, neither Bithumb nor FTX had responded to Forkast's request for comment on the topic. Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder and chief executive of FTX, has provided assistance to businesses like BlockFi and Voyager Digital when those companies have experienced a liquidity problem.
Bithumb is one of only five cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea that have been granted permission to provide cash-to-cryptocurrency conversion services.
In South Korea, Bithumb was responsible for 17.1 percent of the entire cryptocurrency trade volume in 2017, second only to the Upbit exchange in that regard. By providing financial support to struggling businesses or acquiring them outright, Bankman-Fried intends to capitalize on the current downturn in the cryptocurrency industry.
This week, persons with knowledge of the situation stated that FTX and its American company FTX US are in talks to acquire fresh financing. If successful, this would put Bankman-Fried in a position to continue his deal-making frenzy, which has seen him commit almost one billion dollars so far.
According to the data provider CoinGecko, the cryptocurrency trading platform Bithumb, which was established in 2014, presently handles an average daily volume of trades worth approximately $569 million.
It was one of the crypto exchanges in South Korea whose premises were raided this week by local prosecutors as part of an expanding probe into Terraform Labs following the failure of the TerraUSD stablecoin in May. The investigation comes as a result of the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin.
For more developments on the crypto news go to Latest Moni.
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