FTX denies plans to buy the Huobi exchange

What’s new? FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried denied rumors that his crypto exchange intends to buy digital asset trading platform Huobi. According to Bankman-Fried, the need for a refutation arose because misleading information about the takeover was widely discussed in the crypto community and media. In particular, the fact that the head of FTX allegedly intends to buy a share of the founder of Huobi Leon Li, on August 12 was reported by journalists at Bloomberg.

Just to be explicit because apparently a lot of people are saying this:No, we are not planning to acquire Huobi.— SBF (@SBF_FTX) August 29, 2022

How did events develop? According to Bloomberg, Li began negotiations to sell his controlling stake in the company, planning to sell 60% of Huobi shares at a price of up to $3 billion. Journalists claimed that in addition to Bankman-Fried, the founder of blockchain platform TRON, Justin Sun, is among the possible buyers. With reference to insiders, it was claimed that the deal could be completed as early as the end of August.

The head of FTX declined to comment at the time. Sun, in turn, on the day of publication, said on Twitter that his company is not involved in any negotiations on this issue.

We have not engaged any matters related to the Bloomberg story at this moment.— H.E. Justin Sun🌞🇬🇩 (@justinsuntron) August 12, 2022

What is known about Huobi? It is a digital asset trading platform founded in 2013 in Beijing. Currently, it is based in Seychelles, it also has offices in Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, and the US. It hosts 624 digital assets and, 1021 trading pairs. The daily trading volume as of August 30, 14:30 UTC is $587,97 million, according to CoinGecko.

The native token, Huobi Token (HT), is used to receive fee discounts, as well as additional rewards and bonuses. The asset is trading at $4,91, having lost 5,3% in 24 hours. The asset has a market capitalization of $753,8 million.

Earlier, Bankman-Fried denied another Bloomberg report about FTX’s venture capital operations merging with Alameda Research, also owned by the billionaire. Bankman-Fried noted that the publication was distorting the facts. He explained that the exchange’s venture capital arm, FTX Ventures, has been investing more in startups recently, but there has been no talk of merging the companies.