In an interview at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao told Bloomberg that the company is considering buying banks to help bridge the gap between traditional finance and cryptocurrencies.
Zhao didn’t mention any company’s name, but he said he’s interested in minority investments and outright purchases.
According to him, “There are people who hold certain types of local licenses, traditional banking, payment-service providers, even banks. We’re looking at those things.”
Binance Has Over $1 Billion to Spend on Acquisitions
Zhao, who pledged $500 million to help finance Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, has previously stated that Binance has over $1 billion to spend on acquisitions. So far this year, Zhao’s acquisition strategy has been focused on the publishing, decentralized finance (DeFi), and non-fungible token (NFT) industries.
Opportunity to Leverage on Share Price
Zhao stated that investing in banks is a good move for Binance because when the cryptocurrency exchange collaborates with a bank, it usually ends up driving a lot of new users to it, which increases the bank’s valuation.
He said the opportunity will help Binance to gain from the expected boost in a bank’s share price after the business agreement has been signed with the company.
“What we have found is when banks work with us, we drive so many users to them, so the bank’s valuation goes up exponentially, like why don’t we just invest in them as well, so that we capture some of the equity upside.”
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