Crypto Exchange Binance Acquires Competitor FTX After Sudden Money Trouble – IT Pro – News

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance takes over competing exchange FTX. The latter suddenly turns out to be in financial trouble. Those problems arose earlier this week when there was a bank run on FTX coins.

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, confirm on Twitter that the company will actually be taken over. FTX and Binance have entered into an agreement for an acquisition for an undisclosed amount. Other details on the acquisition were also not disclosed. However, CEO Bankman-Fried says FTX’s US subsidiary will not be taken over. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao to say that the request for help came from FTX and that a non-binding letter of intent has now been drawn up.

Rumors of a possible acquisition had been circulating for days later that problems seemed to arise at FTX. That is, along with Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency trading venues. The rumors began earlier this month. Coindesk news site then broke the news that FTX was found to be linked to Alameda Research, another major scholarship. The companies weren’t separated from each other as expected, but Alameda used FTX’s FTT cryptocurrency to cover their debts. As a result, the FTX itself also turned out to have less liquid assets than expected. Binance CEO Zhang then decided to sell all of its FTX coins, which caused a run on the FTX and FTT coin counters. On Tuesday it lost almost all of its value in one go.

The acquisition leaves little serious competition in the cryptocurrency market. Binance is by far the biggest party there. FTX used to be a solid competitor, but due to the acquisition Binance has a huge position in the market and the rest is only split into small platforms. The acquisition appears to have a direct impact on the price of other cryptocurrencies; Bitcoin and Ethereum have already lost a lot of value since Tuesday.