news hardware This crypto platform plans to buy banks
Despite the cryptocurrency winter following Bitcoin’s fall, crypto industry players continue to grow in times of crisis. One of the largest platforms for buying and reselling virtual currencies even plans to buy real traditional banks.
Bitcoin and crypto against a bank?
If the period for the development of the cryptocurrency sector does not seem favorable due to Bitcoin’s decline since November 2021, this recent announcement seems to indicate exactly the opposite.
In fact, Binance, the crypto behemoth, is planning to buy traditional banking institutions. Founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, Binance has grown exponentially during recent crypto bull cycles. Today, the company is considered the largest cryptocurrency platform.
But the digital asset company doesn’t intend to stop there in its rise…
Last Wednesday, Changpeng Zao (CZ), the head of Binance, spoke about his investment prospects for the next few years during an interview reserved for financial outlet Bloomberg.
With a budget of one billion dollars, the CEO wants to acquire real banks:
“There are people who have certain types of local licenses, traditional banks, payment processors, even banks. We’re looking at these things,” the Biannce boss said in an interview at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon.
A common interest for cryptos and banks?
While the news may come as a surprise, the idea has been popping up among crypto giants for some time. As early as July 2021, the FTX platform was talking about buying banking institutions. In the same way, the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX had announced a possible takeover of a German bank for early 2022.
This kind of recurring announcements from multiple crypto players confirms the existence of a synergy between the different parties (banks and crypto platforms).
“What we’ve found is that when banks partner with us, we attract so many users, to the point where the bank’s rating goes up exponentially. So why not just invest in these to gain some? of stock upside?” explains Changpeng Zao (CZ), CEO of Binance.
From this perspective, Binance could thus become a real virtual bank – a comparison that seems realistic when we know that Binance already offers crypto payment cards and other services modeled on the traditional banking system.
These new ambitions show a reversal of the situation, since a few years ago banks were feverish, even hostile, to virtual currencies — even going so far as to ban their customers from buying cryptos.
If Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, is still alive, he can boast of having won his bet: that of creating an alternative to the banking system. However, the news doesn’t necessarily please the users of Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies… Since Binance is actually owned by one entity, the decentralized aspect doesn’t really matter anymore, 13 years after Bitcoin was founded.