Sam Bankman-Fried Denies Intentions to Acquire Huobi

Key Takeaways:

Rumour has it that FTX has finished the deal.
According to SBF, they do not have any plans to buy Huobi.

Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of SBF, claims that FTX, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange, will not buy a controlling stake in Huobi.

SBF clearly rejected a Bloomberg report that said FTX intended to acquire cryptocurrency exchange Huobi in a tweet on Monday. On August 12, UKTN reported that Huobi co-founder Leon Li is thinking about selling his controlling ownership in the business, which is worth more than $1 billion.

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

Under SBF’s direction, FTX and Alameda Research intervened a few times during the downturn market to save crypto businesses that were having liquidity problems. Bankman-Fried stated that both businesses had a responsibility to “seriously consider stepping in, even if it is at a loss to ourselves, to halt contagion” since it would be “good for the ecosystem” in a June interview with NPR.

Journalist Colin Wu claims that last week, all Huobi workers’ email addresses were switched from Huobi.com to the-inc.com.

Last week, Huobi changed all employee email addresses from https://t.co/uiqrIPWAHO to https://t.co/JibBeOZb47. It is rumored that FTX has completed the acquisition. Bloomberg also reported that FTX and Justin Sun were involved. SBF said: we are not planning to acquire Huobi. https://t.co/vDbGFrik9V
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 29, 2022

Alameda presented Voyager Digital with a loan of $200 million in USD Coin (USDC) and a “revolving line of credit” of 15,000 Bitcoin (BTC), which at the time was valued about $300 million.

In addition, FTX provided BlockFi with a $250 million revolving credit facility. BlockFi claimed to have grown by almost 250,000% in 2022 while laying off 20% of its workforce.

The possibility that FTX, which has provided financial support to a number of struggling cryptocurrency businesses, including the exchange BlockFi and the lender Voyager Digital and may ultimately takeover both companies, had grown, was considering acquiring the Seychelles-based Huobi.

According to a mid-August Bloomberg article, FTX and Huobi founder Leon Li had initial discussions about FTX purchasing a controlling share in Huobi, which would value the company at $3 billion or more.

According to the article, a deal might be finalised by the end of this month, and Justin Sun, the creator of the Tron blockchain network, was also considering making a bid for the share. Sun denied having any desire to tweet.