According to the CEO, he is committed to Web3 services and that he is looking at potential acquisitions. Binance doesn’t care about how many users it attracts, but they don’t want to offer users the opportunity to trade stocks.
CEO Changpeng Zhao stated to Decrypton ‘s latest podcast that cryptocurrency exchanges that offer the feature are neither right or wrong. However, he stressed that his company’s philosophy doesn’t allow for swapping equities.
Some crypto companies are now focusing on adding new features to their users as they suffer a market slump. FTX started offering clients the possibility to trade stocks through accounts that are funded with stablecoins in May.
CZ stated that “some exchanges want stock trading back,” referring to FTX. CZ stated that stock trading is not something they have in mind. “We are not planning to open a fiscal broker shop anytime soon.”
While stock trading has been a profitable market for many retail investment platforms such as Robinhood or Webull, CZ stated that he would rather Binance concentrate on building more Web3 tools.
CZ stated that “We are a pure Web3 business.” “We are not going back, but we are moving forward.”
Binance has been pursuing a number of companies for acquisition during this bear market. However, the CEO stated that none of them would be focused on traditional equities exchange. CZ suggested that potential deals would be simpler than a complex loan structure or bailout.
CZ stated that complex deals do not necessarily make for bad deals. “But I prefer to keep things very simple and very straight-forward, boil it down to the core principles and then go from there.”
He also commented directly about the 500 million credit line extended to Voyager Digital, a bankrupt crypto broker.
Bankman-Fried purchased a 7.6% stake at Robinhood in May. Bloomberg reported last year that he was interested to buy the stock and cryptocurrency trading app. He dismissed the rumor and stated that “no active M&A discussions about Robinhood currently take place.”
