Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is aiming to amass about $1 billion dollars in a crypto recovery fund targeted at purchasing distressed digital assets.
Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s CEO, told Bloomberg Television on Thursday that the leading exchange is willing to extend the target amount if need be. The fund will be open to contributions from participants in the cryptocurrency industry, the CEO added.
Over a week ago, Zhao announced that it was forming an industry recovery fund “to reduce further cascading negative effects of FTX.” In addition, the fund will help “projects who are otherwise strong but in a liquidity crisis,” Zhao said.
Crypto Troubles
The leading crypto exchange’s announcement comes weeks after the cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States following a liquidity crisis and a failed bail-out attempt from Binance. New revelations from the bankruptcy proceedings suggest that FTX could owe up to 1 million creditors as the once-beloved exchange was poorly managed under Sam Bankman-Fried, its Founder and former CEO.
In the past few months, the crypto markets have been thrown into turmoil with the failure of major crypto firms. In May, Luna and TerraUST collapsed, wiping out an estimated $60 billion from the cryptocurrency market. In the aftermath of this collapse, the crypto asset broker, Voyager Digital and the digital asset lender, Celcius Network went bankrupt.
Initially, FTX won the bid to acquire Voyager Digital. However, with the crypto exchange struggling with its crumbling empire, Binance has started positioning itself to take over the bankrupt cryptocurrency brokerage firm. On the other hand, the cryptocurrency markets continue to suffer price hits, with Bitcoin earlier this week sinking to its lowest level since November 2020.
Bybit Offers Support
Meanwhile, Bybit, a cryptocurrency exchange with headquarters in Singapore, launched a $100 million fund on Thursday to support old and new market markers “during this challenging period.” The exchange plans to provide up to $10 million to institutional clients on its platform as well as to dedicated account managers.
According to the latest data from CoinMarketCap, Bybit, with $389.5 million in crypto spot volume, ranks 11th on the list of the largest crypto exchanges. Binance continues to lead the table, with $12.3 billion in crypto spot volume in the past 24 hours.
