The previous Voyager sale saw FTX emerge as the “white knight,” beating out Binance.
Binance.US, the American arm of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is preparing to bid for bankrupt lending platform Voyager Digital, according to a person familiar with the plans.
A previous auction, which was completed around the end of last September, saw the now defunct FTX emerging as the “white knight,” winning out against rivals Wave Financial and Binance. At the time, CoinDesk had also reported that Binance’s bid for the U.S.-based Voyager had been shut out due to national security concerns.
Following FTX’s announcement last week to file for bankruptcy, Voyager said it had reopened the bidding process for the company, and is in active discussions with alternative bidders. Wave Financial and trading platform Cross Tower are reported to be in the running.
Voyager did not return requests for comment by press time.
Voyager’s native token VGX jumped as much as 50% after CoinDesk’s report was published, at the time of writing VGX was up over 40% at $0.4066.
Thomas Braziel, managing partner at investment firm 507 Capital said matters are complicated by the fact Voyager is going to have a claim against the FTX estate for breach of contract.
“The problem is that the claim is only going to be against FTX US,” said Braziel in an interview. “I worry a lot of the collateral is going to be held in trust. So any cause of action they have could end up being behind all the customers. And the problem is that if customers aren’t going to be made whole, then what’s your unsecured claim going to be worth? It’s going to be worth bupkis.”
Earlier this week, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said his exchange is setting up an industry recovery fund to help rebuild the industry.
“Binance is not looking to be the ‘white knight’ of crypto,” said Binance chief communications officer Patrick Hillmann in a message to CoinDesk. “There are no Luke Skywalkers or Darth Vaders in business. This is a company, with the most to lose as it’s market leader, looking around to see where we can help bolster the industry through a black swan event.”
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