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Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has agreed to buy its rival FTX's non-US operations, FTX.com, after speculation following an announcement that Binance was to sell its FTX token holdings.
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried confirmed on Tuesday night in a series of tweets that the two companies had come to an agreement on a “strategic transaction”.
He said teams within the company were working on clearing withdrawal backlogs and that customers were “protected”. The transaction does not currently impact FTX.us or Binance.us, which are two separate companies, Bankman-Fried’s tweets added.
He sought to reassure users, tweeting: “I know that there have been rumours in media of conflict between our two exchanges, however Binance has shown time and again that they are committed to a more decentralized global economy while working to improve industry relations with regulators. We are in the best of hands.”
In an interview with Zawya last month, FTX’s MENA CEO Balsam Danhach said the region was the company’s third biggest market, and that it had global trade volumes of $12 billion per day.
The company, which received its licence to operate in Dubai as a regulated exchange in the summer, is in the process of migrating its existing regional customer base on to the new FTX MENA platform, he said.
Speaking about the impact of financial uncertainty on cryptocurrency, he said: “What we have seen over the past two or three years is a trigger that accelerated the acceptance of crypto currency.”
“We have seen the utilities of it in crises, we have seen the utilities of it during COVID. It kind of moved the whole thing forward, not just for crypto, but the whole space.”
(Reporting by Imogen Lillywhite; editing by Seban Scaria)
