Changpeng Zhao, CEO of the world's biggest crypto exchange - Binance, is considering acquiring banks in an attempt to close the gap between the worlds of decentralized finance and crypto and the traditional financial.

The leading crypto exchange has close to $1 billion in its treasury to strike acquisition deals. Zhao, also known as "CZ" in the crypto space, did not reveal a potential target for the acquisition. He unvieled his plans in an interview with Bloomberg during the Web Summit conference in Lisbon.

"There are people who hold certain types of local licenses, traditional banking, payment-service providers, even banks. We're looking at those things," Zhao said in the interview. "We want to be the bridge between crypto and the traditional financial world."

In October, the crypto billionaire disclosed that Binance has over $1 billion to focus on crypto investments. Thus far, the exchange had committed close to $325 million in 67 projects as compared to $140 million in 73 projects in 2021.

Along with these investments, Binance had also invested $500 million in Elon Musk's deal to acquire Twitter, for a total of $44 billion.

"What we have found is when banks work with us, we drive so many users to them, so the bank's valuation goes up exponentially, like why don't we just invest in them as well, so that we capture some of the equity upside," he noted.

Binance is considering a full-scale acquisition or a minority investment of banks, CZ further said.

The world's biggest crypto exchange has been on an expansion spree amidst the crypto bear market after striking deals with some of the biggest names in the industry. Recently, the exchange debuted Binance Oracle, a decentralized Web3 Oracle to compete with Chainlink (LINK).

The exchange's BNB Chain introduced a $10 million fund called the Growth Incentive Program to support projects on the blockchain.

Zhao Changpeng, founder and chief executive officer of Binance, attends a conference in Paris
Reuters
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