In response to a rumor spreading on Chinese social media that FTX had acquired Huobi, Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, denied on Tuesday that he has plans to acquire Huobi.
Bankman-Fried clarified on Twitter, “No, we are not planning to acquire Huobi,” because it seems like a lot of people are saying this.
A user with more than 500,000 followers on the Chinese version of Twitter, Weibo, claimed on Monday that FTX had acquired Huobi and that Huobi would now go by the name HTX. Crypto media 8BTC cited the article in English on Twitter.
A Bloomberg report from earlier in August claimed that Leon Li, the founder of the Chinese-based cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Group, was in talks to sell a majority stake in the business, with Sam Bankman-Fried and Justin Sun, the creator of Tron, as potential buyers. Sun, however, has refuted his intentions to acquire.
Southeast Asian regulators are cracking down on Huobi, seizing the exchange’s license while Malaysian regulators are talking to Huobi about the possibility of including Huobi on an investor warning list.
According to cryptocurrency analysis firm Kaiko, FTX is one of the biggest cryptocurrency spot exchanges in the world and earlier this year overtook Coinbase in volume for the first time. According to a financial report that was leaked, the exchange’s revenue increased by more than 1,000% in 2021, according to CNBC.
BlockFi and Voyager, two cryptocurrency lenders, became insolvent during the bear market, and Sam Bankman-Fried signed agreements to bail them out.
