Sam Bankman-Fried has more than $2 billion ready to bankroll acquisitions — and if they're as 'cheap' as Robinhood, that's a good thing

Sam Bankman-Fried cofounded FTX in 2019 and is its CEO.

FTX

• FTX boss Sam Bankman-Fried says he's amassed more than $2 billion to bankroll acquisitions. 
• He wants to expand FTX from a crypto exchange into a multi-asset trading platform.
• Bankman-Fried, who recently invested in Robinhood, said cheap deals appeal to him.

Cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried says FTX has amassed more than $2 billion to spend on acquisitions and stakes in other companies.

He wants to expand FTX from a crypto exchange into a platform where users can trade multiple assets including stocks, he told Bloomberg. 

"FTX is a profitable company," Bankman-Fried said. "You can look at the amount that we've raised over the last year or two — it's a few billion dollars. That gives maybe a sense of where we are in terms of cash that was explicitly viewed from a potential acquisition angle."

Bankman-Fried and FTX have been on quite the shopping spree lately, snapping up stakes in LedgerX, a Commodity Futures Trading Commission-regulated exchange, and two trading platforms, IEX Group and Robinhood Markets. 

"It's always something that we're going to be open to and keeping our ears to the ground on," Bankman-Fried said, referring to buying and investing in other businesses. 

News of Bankman-Fried's 7.6% position in Robinhood Markets helped push the online brokerage's stock price up as much as 30% earlier this month. The FTX boss pounced after Robinhood's stock fell to its lowest point since its post-IPO peak last August, partly reflecting the revelation it was cutting hundreds of jobs. 

Its stock price has steadily fallen from $38 per share on its market debut to about $10 today, per Yahoo Finance. The reduced price undoubtedly appealed to Bankman-Fried. "If it's cheap, sure," he told Bloomberg about what piques his interest in acquisitions.

Bankman-Fried told Bloomberg his ambition to turn FTX into a multi-asset trading platform stems from his desire to give customers all of the financial services they need in one app. 

FTX.US president Brett Harrison has shared a similar vision for the company. "What we eventually want to offer is an everything app for financial services," he said, after the crypto exchange announced plans to give its customers a fee-free stock-trading service.  

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