Billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried-owned digital asset exchange FTX has won the rights to the auction of assets of Voyager Digital Ltd. The brokerage firm, founded in 2018 and considered one of the fast-growing cryptocurrency platforms in the US, is now bankrupt, according to people with information on the matter.
According to Bloomberg news, the acquisition price could go up if all the criteria are met for assets under management.
Requests for comments from Voyager or FTX did not elicit any response.
The earlier attempts to bail out or acquire Voyager by FTX were unsuccessful. The New York-based publicly traded crypto platform has about 1.19 million funded accounts and 3.5 million users by March end of this year.
Liz Hoffman, the former Journal reporter at Wall Street, tweeted that FTX was successful in the auction of Voyager with details of the acquisition cost, citing unidentified people.
A failed attempt by Alameda Research to bail out Voyager with a revolving line of credit led to the crypto firm filing for bankruptcy protection in July. Alameda Research is an FTX-affiliated trading house.
Alameda and FTX made a joint bid to acquire Voyager in July, but at that time, Voyager had called the offer “low ball .”In September, Alameda informed that it would return the borrowed $200 million worth of Ether and Bitcoin to Voyager by the end of this month.
Bargain Hunt
Bankman- Fried this year has been buying out distressed cryptocurrency companies in an aggressive fashion. They have acquired millions of customers and got access to valuable technologies at more than half the price of what these companies valued a year ago.
FTX, in early 2022, had propped up Block, a crypto platform, and was looking for a potential bid to takeover Robinhood Markets Inc. Based out of Menlo Park, California, Robinhood is a financial services company that facilitates commission-free stock trades, ETFs, and cryptos via a mobile app. Bankman-Fried, who has more than 50% shareholding in FTX, including 70% of FTX US, and almost all of Alameda, also has a stake in Robinhood.
FTX is working towards raising $1 billion in funding, according to a familiar source. The details of this funding round are not yet disclosed to the public.
