Voyager Digital: VGX price up 24.4% as Changpeng Zhao confirms Binance.US bid
15:28, 24 November 2022
Binance’s CEO has confirmed that the US arm of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange is making another bid for Voyager Digital.
Changpeng Zhao, co-founder and CEO of Binance, told Bloomberg: “We will make another bid for Voyager now”, adding they would “see how this plays out”.
The news has resulted in the vgx token (VGX), the native token of Voyager, as of 13.00 GMT on 24 November rising by 24.4% compared to the previous day to $0.44, according to CoinMarketCap.
Binance.US had placed a bid to buy the assets of the bankrupt crypto-lending platform in September 2022, but lost out to FTX – now in bankruptcy itself.
FTX bought the assets after two weeks and numerous rounds of bidding “in a highly competitive auction process”. Its bid was worth roughly $1.42bn (£1.17bn) and consisted of the fair market value of the crypto lender’s assets and $111m (£91m) of “incremental value”.
However, FTX filed for bankruptcy on 11 November 2022, which led to the auction reopening and Voyager once again being “in active discussions with alternative bidders”.
The crypto lender stated that “Voyager did not transfer any assets to FTX US in connection with the previously proposed transaction.” FTX US so far had sent across a $5m (£4.1m) “good faith” deposit as part of the auction process “which is held in escrow”.
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‘Rumours spread by FTX to try and push us out of the bid’
At the time of the first sale of Voyager’s assets, there were fears that Binance’s bid would be rejected on the grounds of US national security.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) can block deals it feels could present a risk to national security. Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have taken a cautious view of Chinese investment in US firms.
Zhao responded by saying: “First of all, I think the US national security concerns were rumours spread by FTX to try and push us out of the bid.”
The Binance CEO added: “There were never any concerns about Binance.US participating in the bid.” He said that Binance has acquired multiple companies in America without any issues.
The CEO also reiterated that “Binance is not a Chinese company, we are not related to China at all” and that Zhao himself is a Canadian citizen.
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"Binance is not a Chinese company, we are not related to China at all."
— Bloomberg Crypto (@crypto) November 24, 2022
CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao (@cz_binance), who is considering a bid for assets of bankrupt crypto firm Voyager, said on @BloombergTV his company is mistakenly believed to be Chinese "because I look Chinese" pic.twitter.com/Wqos9XTeW5
$1bn fund for distressed crypto assets
Binance is also planning the launch of $1bn crypto recovery fund for the purchase of distressed crypto assets. “If that is not enough, we can allocate more,” said Zhao.
The CEO added: “If after six months there’s unused funds and there’s not that many projects – hopefully the industry will have recovered by then – we can withdraw it back.”
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