Houbi Founder to Sell Exchange’s Stake at $3B

Leon Li, who is the founder of Chinese Crypto exchange Houbi, is in talks with various parties to sell Houbi stake at $3B. If this takeover is successful, it will be the biggest take over in the crypto industry during the ongoing recession.

The Interested Buyers for Houbi

The Chinese crypto tycoon is in talks with different billionaires to sell his stake, almost 60% of the firm. As per reported by Bloomberg, the two big names among the interested buyers are of Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX) and Justin Sun (Tron). Sam Bankman-Fried is an expected name in this kind of deals as he is already in talks with BlockFi to acquire it.

Present supporters of the sell, Sequoia China and ZhenFund received and shared this information about the decision of Leon Li. The founder expects the shares to be sold for $3B while experts believe that the deal may be signed somewhere between $2B and $3B.

Other Interested Buyers

Although FTX and Tron are the two most probable buyers but not confirmed yet as Houbi leadership is in talks with other international buyers as well. A Houbi worker confirmed that the exchange’s co-founder is having virtual meetings with different organizations for the same purpose. Li wants to sign a deal with the bidder who can invest more energy and resources to enhance the exchange’s growth.

Houbi’s expansion stopped when it had to withdraw its services from China, its parent country, due to a ban of crypto related transactions. Before this setback, Houbi was among the top crypto exchanges for crypto trading. Now it has targeted Brazilian and Turkish markets mostly but new competitors such as FTX and Binance have given Houbi a real tough time.

Some of the rich financiers in the crypto market are trying to benefit from the recession to raise bargain investment. FTX of Sam Bankman-Fried has allocated $1B already for this purpose and offering support to bankrupt venues such as BlockFi and Voyager Digital and no Houbi is also one of their targets as the stakes being sold by Leon Li are more than 60%.