Bitcoin exchange FTX may consider acquiring American giants of traditional finance, as soon as it overtakes rivals Coinbase and Binance. This was stated by its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried in an interview with Financial Times.
“If we are the largest exchange, [a purchase of Goldman Sachs and CME Group] is not ruled out at all,” he said.
FTX announced raising up to $1 billion of additional financing. It was expected that with this capital the exchange’s market capitalization surpassed $100 billion.
Goldman Sachs’ market value is almost $128 billion, and CME’s is about $76 billion.
Coinbase, which Bankman-Fried named among the main competitors, on April 14, 2021 went public on Nasdaq via a direct listing. After trading began, the company’s market capitalization surpassed $100 billion. Even after stock prices fell to local lows in June, Coinbase has a market value of about $52 billion at the time of writing.
Bankman-Fried’s fortune is $10 billion, according to the Chinese research institute Hurun. Forbes rates him at $8.7 billion, the bulk of which is his stake in FTX and assets in FTT tokens.
In early July, the cryptocurrency exchange Bullish announced plans to list on the NYSE via a reverse merger, aiming for a $9 billion valuation.
Bankman-Fried said that FTX is considering entering the equity markets, but for now such plans are on hold.
“We are in a good position: we do not need to do this because there is no need for capital. On the other hand, listing has potentially large advantages, such as brand recognition. We are not actively pursuing such opportunities, but we want to be ready to move forward,” said the FTX CEO.
According to CoinGecko, the daily spot trading volume on the exchange is $1.76 billion; Coinbase has a nearly identical figure, while Binance’s is $13.1 billion.
Earlier this June, FTX launched trading of tokenized shares of 60 largest companies, including Facebook, Google, Netflix and Tesla.