Binance Prepares To Buy A Bank? CZ Has $1 Billion War Chest

Per a report from Bloomberg, crypto exchange Binance is stepping up its game and could potentially go into a shopping spree. The trading venue might be exploring buying a traditional financial institution to “bridge the gap” with the nascent industry. 

The company’s CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, expressed his intention to allocate over $1 billion in potential acquisition in the coming months. The crypto exchange is following the old industry adagio, “bear markets are for buying and accumulating.” 

In an interview at the Web Summit Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, one of the friendlier places for crypto investors due to its 0% tax on digital assets, CZ said:

There are people who hold certain types of local licenses, traditional banking, payment-service providers, even banks. We’re looking at those things. We want to be the bridge between crypto and the traditional, financial world.

Binance Ready To Leverage Crypto Bear Market

The Binance CEO believes buying a traditional financial institution might be a “smart move” for the trading venue. The platform already operates with banks and has seen many users flocking to these conventional institutions to leverage the crypto exchange products. 

In that sense, banks see a spike in their valuation, CZ believes. If the institutions already benefit, the crypto exchange might take control of the entire process and capture 100% of the benefits. 

In a separate report, Bloomberg notes that Binance has already committed over $300 million to 67 projects. In 2021, the company invested $140 million in 73 projects. As mentioned, the company is still expecting to deploy over $500 million in the capital. 

Last month, CZ said the following about potential investments, why crypto lenders might not be an ideal choice, and why other sectors in the nascent space could provide more value: 

We did look at a lot of lenders in recent months, because that’s where all the issues are. Many of them, they just take a user’s money and give it to somebody else. There’s not a lot of intrinsic value (…) NFT use cases have not largely been well built — NFTs for tickets, for university degrees. I think the technology will stay. Overall at a high level, during the bear market we’ll see more market consolidation. There’s a lot of risks and a lot of pain, but also a lot of opportunity.

Binance Partners With Elon Musk

The crypto exchange committed $500 million to billionaire and entrepreneur Elon Musk for Twitter’s acquisition. According to CZ, the company sees a lot of potential in the social media and its further integration with crypto and digital assets. 

Speaking with The Times, CZ called his deal with Musk a “No brainer.” The executive claims that Binance supports Musk’s free speech cause and aims to boost people’s financial freedom. The two reasons are related, according to the executive. CZ added:

We’re very long-term investors so we anticipate to be involved in the next 10 to 50 to 100 years. We’re not bothered by short term; we don’t care about that. We care about long-term potential for the platform, and with Twitter plus Elon? Independently, they have a lot of potential, but combined, there is such high potential. Ten to 20 years from now, we’re very confident that this will be a much stronger platform than Twitter yesterday.