FTX CEO denies rumors of possible Robinhood takeover

The CEO of cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, denied the rumor generated by information published by Bloomberg mentioning that the company is looking for opportunities to buy the popular Robinhood platform. He expressed that the company is not looking for any active merger or acquisition with the trading app.

In this recent article, Bloomberg quoted "people with knowledge of the matter" and reported that FTX is holding internal talks on ways to acquire Robinhood, although the latter has not received any formal acquisition proposal from FTX.

Robinhood's stock price shot up as much as 18% following the publication of this article last Monday, eventually rising 14% by the end of the day. However, after Bankman-Fried denied the rumor, the stock fell 4.5%.

In a statement emailed to MarketWatch and picked up by CoinQuora, Bankman-Fried mentioned, "We are excited about Robinhood's business prospects and possible ways we could partner with them, I have always been impressed with the business Vlad and his team have built. That said, there are no active M&A discussions with Robinhood." The statement was sent on Tuesday, June 28th.

The Bloomberg article also reported that last month FTX bought a 7.6% stake in Robinhood for $648 million, citing "sources close to the matter."

In other news, Bankman-Fried firms recently signed agreements to bail out smaller players in the cryptocurrency market. FTX has also agreed to provide a $250 million revolving credit facility to cryptocurrency lender BlockFi. Bankman-Fried's quantitative trading firm Alameda committed to fund $500 million to a cryptocurrency brokerage platform, Voyager Digital, as well.