Crypto enthusiasts are no longer unfamiliar with Sam Bankman-Fried. The young billionaire is the founder of FTX, a rapidly growing crypto exchange that is now among the largest.
Yesterday, rumors arose that this exchange had big plans. More specifically – they are eyeing on taking over Robinhood.
Robinhood takeover
Bloomberg reported on this yesterday with a news release. FTX is said to be in talks to completely take over Robinhood. This news report states that FTX is internally considering buying the other exchange. This caused a stir on Twitter; tweets about the possible acquisition were shared and liked thousands of times.
That makes sense since this is huge news, given the size of both companies. Bloomberg – a news platform that is normally very reliable – did not mention a clear source in the article.
That did provide a reason to not fully trust the report. The article came out stating that Bloomberg had been told this by people who ”had knowledge of the matter” – but these turned out not to be entirely reliable after all.
Response by Sam Bankman-Fried
The takeover does not appear to be happening, as Sam Bankman-Fried has since completely debunked this rumor. So his company is not waiting for a takeover of the US market, but on the other hand there are other noises coming from the owner of FTX:
“There are no active M&A discussions with Robinhood,” Bankman-Fried said in a response to the rumor. “We are excited about Robinhood’s business prospects and possible ways we could partner with them.”
So FTX would be open to a partnership, and it would be a big step for both markets. Robinhood is not an unknown and especially not a small player in the crypto world, just like FTX.
So despite the fact that we can’t expect a full acquisition anytime soon, Robinhood now knows that FTX is open to a possible collaboration.