FTX is reportedly in “advance talks” with Bithumb to sign an acquisition deal

The crypto exchange giant FTX has reportedly planned to buy South Korea’s second-largest crypto exchange Bithumb.

As per a recent report by Bloomberg, FTX and Bithumb are in currently in “advance talks” to sign the acquisition deal. A person close to the matter said that two exchange platforms have been working on the agreement for months.

According to Bloomberg and “people with knowledge of the matter,” FTX and its American subsidiary FTX US is also looking to raise additional funds.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of FTX, has played a prominent role during the current weak market. According to recent interviews with the crypto billionaire, his company is trying to keep a number of significant players afloat regardless of profit potential.

“The explicit sort of working principle we had in a number of these was like; it’s okay to do a deal that’s like moderately bad in bailing out a place. The bar was not ‘is this a good return on investment?’ The bar is like ‘this is not that bad of a return on our investment,’ or ‘we are incinerating a relatively smallish amount of money in doing this.'”

FTX and its increasing acquisition

Since the beginning of the significant negative volatility in the cryptocurrency markets, the exchange has acquired a number of companies, including lending platform BlockFi. In addition to a $400 million revolving credit line, FTX also agreed to an option to purchase BlockFi for a variable price of up to $240 million.

Later in June, as TheCoinRise reported, FTX has also been discussing acquiring Robinhood. In the same month, the exchange stuck a deal with the regulated Whitelabel brokerage services firm Embed.

Most recently, the CEO said that the company has “a few billion” to help struggling firms amid the ongoing crypto winter. He aims to protect user assets and stop these crises from reflecting back through the system:

“Having trust with consumers that things will work as advertised is incredibly important and if broken is incredibly hard to get back.”