The United States-based affiliate of one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency derivatives platforms, FTX US, that announced in August the acquisition of LedgerX, has announced today the deal has been finalized.
FTX has been growing and expanding its business heads. As previously mentioned, FTX.US stated today that LedgerX will now be known as FTX US Derivatives. This will allow for the platform to expand its crypto derivatives offerings to its United States users. Asides from this, the global exchange recently launched a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, which is focused on Solana based NFT’s.
To top it up, last week, FTX announced a meme-friendly fundraising, to the tune of $420.69 million from 69 investors, which includes the likes of Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital, Lightspeed Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Sea Capital and so on.
The company also announced that the Singapore government-owned investment giant, Temasek also participated in its Series B. Even with big names participating in the funding round, Sam Bankman-Fried still remains a majority owner of the firm.
LedgerX becomes FTX US Derivatives
LedgerX which will now go by FTX US Derivatives, is a digital currency futures and options exchange regulated under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Swap Execution Facility (SEF) and Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO).
The platform can be used by both retail and institutional investors, allowing them to trade cryptocurrency futures with the physical settlement of all contracts.
According to the announcement, the acquisition will have no material impact on the operations as the platform will continue to provide its current services to its existing customer base. It states that the deal will provide FTX.US with the ability to offer options and futures contracts on Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) to institutional and retail investors, significantly expanding its trading services.
What they are saying
In an interview with one of LedgerX’s board members, James Wo, he explained that the business will continue its operations with no significant changes to the management team but there are some changes to the board structure.
He stated, “FTX will be a major shareholder on the board because previously LedgerX had 2 board seats, me and Terry and myself and Terry are still on the board and we got other people like the CEO of LedgerX Zach, the Chair of LedgerX Larry who was a former commissioner of CFTC on board. Previously Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed was on board but no longer on board right now. There are other board members like Tom from Miami International Holdings as an independent director.”
When asked about the transaction cost of acquiring LedgerX, he stated, “pretty big deal,” but refused to give the actual amount stating, “according to the agreement, there is a confidential clause that states that we cannot disclosure the number that was agreed.”
Some of the fresh capital raised is set aside for bringing more firms under the FTX umbrella and from the looks of things, is not slowing down anytime soon. According to an interview with CoinDesk, Sam Bankman-Fried stated, “We’ve probably done a half a billion dollars of acquisitions so far this year.”
The deal gives FTX.US a slew of licenses granted to LedgerX by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As such, the exchange can move to offer crypto futures, swaps and options to U.S. retail traders.
FTX’s native token, FTT is trading $65.05, up 5.05% for the day, as of the time of this writing.
