A few days ago rumors began circulating that crypto exchange FTX wanted to buy Robinhood and now BlockFi, but all of them seem to be fake news.
News is now circulating that FTX has made an offer to acquire BlockFi, the popular DeFi platform, for $25 million.
The price was far too low to be true, as the company’s valuation is currently over $4 billion. And, as a matter of fact, a short time passed and BlockFi’s CEO Zac Prince intervened, declaring that the news put out by CNBC was not true.
Lots of market rumors out there – I can 100% confirm that we aren’t being sold for $25M.
I encourage everyone to trust only details that you hear directly from @BlockFi.
We will share more w you as soon as we can.
— Zac Prince (@BlockFiZac) June 30, 2022
A few days ago a similar rumor was also circulating regarding Robinhood, which FTX was reportedly interested in purchasing. This news was also shortly afterwards declared to be fake news.
Summary
How come all these rumors about FTX?
FTX is definitely an exchange that has been making waves lately. Despite the down market, the company has been in profit for as many as 10 quarters, as CEO Sam Bankman-Fried stated in an interview with Forbes yesterday.
This is also why the company can afford to continue hiring new staff, bucking the trend of its competitors such as Coinbase, which is instead ready to lay off more than 1,000 employees.
After all, FTX wants to increase its staff by 50%, but it appears that this is not due to new acquisitions but rather more work to manage.
Moreover, perhaps the rumor is due to the fact that a few weeks ago FTX lent a $250 million line of credit to BlockFi.
FTX steps back on a deal with Celsius
One more piece of news about FTX leaked in recent days. Some time ago FTX had expressed interest in striking a deal with crypto lending platform Celsius, but apparently has now backed out because of the company’s finances. Indeed, an anonymous source has reportedly revealed that Celsius has a hole in its balance sheet of as much as $2 billion.
Celsius has been having problems for a few weeks now, most notably ever since it halted withdrawals on 12 June citing “extreme market conditions”.
