Bitcoin exchange FTX may consider acquiring the US mainstream financial giants once it overtakes rivals Coinbase and Binance. Its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said this in an interview.
“If we are the largest exchange, the purchase of Goldman Sachs and the CME Group is not ruled out at all,” he said.
FTX previously announced raising $ 1 billion in additional funding. With this capital, the exchange's valuation was expected to rise to $ 20 billion.
According to the publication, the market value of Goldman Sachs is $ 135 billion, and the CME is about $ 76 billion.
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Coinbase, which Bankman-Fried named among its top competitors, went live on the Nasdaq on April 14, 2021, through a direct listing. After the start of trading in shares, the company's capitalization exceeded $ 100 billion. Even after the quotes 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 estimates it at $ 8.7 billion, the overwhelming majority of which is its share in FTX and assets in FTT tokens.
In early July, the Bullish cryptocurrency exchange announced its plans to list on the NYSE through a reverse takeover, hoping for a valuation of $ 9 billion.
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Bankman-Fried said the FTX is considering entering the stock market, but such plans have been postponed for now.