FTX Dismisses Reports of an Acquisition of Huobi

A recent comment made by the CEO of FTX indicates that the major cryptocurrency exchange does not have any plans to buy Huobi.

According to FTX’s Statement, the Company Will Not Acquire Huobi

FTX has stated that it does not have any plans to buy Huobi.

On August 29, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried addressed the rumors and refuted them. On his Twitter account, he wrote, “Just to be explicit because apparently a lot of people are saying this… We do not have any plans to buy Huobi at this time.”

Bankman-Fried has not specified whether or if their company intends to buy shares of Huobi or otherwise invest in the company in some other way.

The transaction, which has since been disproved, was rumored to involve a merger between two large bitcoin exchanges. Over the course of the past twenty-four hours, FTX handled a volume of $1.8 billion, whereas Huobi managed a volume of $640 million during the same time frame.

On August 12, rumors of a prospective buyout first began to spread across the company. At that time, Bloomberg had reported that the creator of Huobi, Leon Li, was beginning to contemplate selling his ownership in the company. The value of Li’s interest in Huobi, which is between $2 billion and $3 billion, is somewhere in that range.

According to that article, a number of investors, including FTX and Justin Sun, may be interested in purchasing a majority position in Huobi.

Although FTX has no plans to purchase Huobi, the company has investigated the possibility of acquiring other businesses so far in 2018. It entertained the idea of acquiring the cryptocurrency loan firm Celsius in June, but ultimately opted against doing so due to Celsius’s precarious financial position. FTX provided BlockFi, a third lender, with a line of credit in the month of July. The conditions of that offer provide it with the option to acquire BlockFi at a price that is negotiable up to 240 million dollars. Recent information suggests that the total value of such a transaction might only be $15 million.

FTX made an offer to acquire Voyager Digital’s assets without purchasing the firm itself in the month of July as well. Despite having already agreed to take a loan from FTX, Voyager Digital was adamant about turning down that offer.

In the same month, Bloomberg reported that the business was considering buying the Bithumb exchange in South Korea.

None of those rumored purchase ambitions have materialized into actual deals. Despite this, given FTX’s huge revenue and status in the sector, it is quite likely that the company is looking into significant purchases.