In Brief:
- Binance CEO Zhao, disclosed that Binance is in early talks with several sovereign wealth funds.
- Binance seeking investment is an attempt to strengthen its relationships with the governments and regulators.
In an interview with Financial Times on 23 November, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, disclosed that Binance is in early discussions with “several” sovereign wealth funds about investing in its global entity. Although it did not name any specific funds.
As per its chief executive, Zhao’s decision to seek investment is an attempt to strengthen its relationships with the governments and mitigate the tough regulations it has been facing, especially from the past few months.
Zhao expects that Binance’s “perception and relationships” with regulators around the world would improve if sovereign wealth funds took a stake in the company, according to the report. “But it may also tie us to specific countries…which we want to be slightly careful with,” Zhao said.
Interestingly, this year, Binance had received heat from tough regulations in countries like Singapore, Japan and China.
Zhao, who also founded Binance, said its global entity has been in early talks to raise capital for its US affiliate ahead of the IPO listing for which it aims to raise a couple hundred millions.
Last week, Binance released fundamental rights for Crypto users. The bill dealt with a range of issues including user privacy and emphasized on “smart regulation.”
On 20 November, Zhao also announced that Binance will “very shortly” announce where the company has decided to locate its headquarters. Thus, this attempt to strengthen its capital structure can be seen as an opening gambit to the firm’s hunt for a new headquarter.