On Monday morning, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried tweeted that the cryptocurrency exchange has no intention to buy Huobi. According to CoinGecko, Huobi is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, with a daily trading volume of over $1 billion.
FTX, which has offered financial lifelines to several troubled crypto companies, including the exchange BlockFi and the lender Voyager Digital, and might potentially purchase both companies, was said to be planning to acquire the China-based Huobi.
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
Bloomberg reported in mid-August that FTX had early discussions with Huobi founder Leon Li to acquire a majority stake in Huobi that would value the company at $3 billion or more. According to the source, a transaction might be finalised by the end of this month, and Justin Sun, the inventor of the Tron blockchain network, is interested in bidding on the stake. Sun denied any desire for a tweet.
FTX acquired the Japanese exchange Liquid and the Canadian trading platform Bitvo earlier this year. FTX was also rumoured to be interested in acquiring the commission-free trading software Robinhood. Still, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev stated in early August that he preferred his company to remain independent.
As a result of Bankman-Fried’s tweet, the value of Huobi’s native token HT decreased by around 6%.