According to a press announcement issued on Liquid Group’s website today, the crypto giant FTX is in the process of acquiring the Japanese fintech company and all of its subsidiaries.
FTX will also assume control of Quoine, one of the first Japanese cryptocurrency exchanges to be established with the country’s Financial Service Agency (FSA) in 2017. Quoine was awarded a Type 1 Instruments Business license by the Financial Services Authority, allowing it to offer derivatives to its consumers.
While the deal’s specifics have yet to be revealed, the press release states that it will be completed in March of this year.
If the terms of the agreement are met, Quoine’s platform will begin to integrate FTX products and services starting March 30 gradually, and FTX’s Japanese customers will be migrated to the platform.
After Binance, FTX is the world’s second most popular cryptocurrency exchange. It is also one of the world’s fastest-growing crypto companies.
In 2020, it paid $150 million acquiring the crypto portfolio tracker Blockfolio and announced plans to work with the Blockfolio team on retail trading software. Blockfolio’s trading app was renamed FTX the following year.
In August of last year, FTX provided a $120 million loan to Liquid Global–the company it has recently purchased–to assist it to recover damages from a $90 million attack that occurred after Liquid’s digital wallets were hijacked.
The U.S. arm of FTX was valued at $8 billion in the first month of this year after a $400 million Series A investment round from investors such as Paradigm, Temasek, Multicoin Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
FTX raised another $400 million in a Series C fundraising round a week later.
All of the investors who participated in the Series A funding round for the U.S. arm also participated in the Series C investment round for the worldwide corporation.
The market capitalization of the exchange is now $32 billion.
In recent months, the exchange has been on a sponsorship binge; in March 2021, the exchange purchased the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s arena for nineteen years, renaming it the FTX Arena.
Since then, FTX has signed relationships with Major League Baseball, the Golden State Warriors, Washington Wizards and Capitals, and TSM, an esports powerhouse based in Los Angeles.
