Binance is considering buying banks to bridge the gap between the worlds of traditional finance and cryptocurrencies, founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said in an interview with Bloomberg.

the billionaire he did not disclose specific targets, saying he was open to minority investments or outright acquisitions. Zhao also pointed out that investment banking is a reasonable strategy for Binance because when partnering with banks, Binance usually attracts many new users, which will also boost the bank’s valuation.

“What we found is that when banks work with us, we attract so many users to them, so the bank’s valuation goes up, like why don’t we invest in them too, so that we can capture part of the capital gains”, he said.

CZ said in an interview at the Web Summit in Lisbon: “There are people who have certain types of local licenses, traditional banking, payment service providers, even banks. We’re looking at those things.”

Zhao has said in the past that Binance has over $1 billion to spend on acquisitions, with his acquisition strategy focused on areas such as DeFi and NFT.

He stressed that traditional financial institutions are now more closely tied to the cryptocurrency industry as a whole. He said that despite the cold winter in the cryptocurrency market due to a number of factors, such as rising interest rates, the correlation between digital assets and traditional finance-“TradFi”-is still deepening. Well-known traditional financial services companies include Goldman Sachs Group Inc., BlackRock Inc, etc.

In June, US multinational investment bank Goldman Sachs Group Inc showed interest in acquiring troubled cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, hoping to buy the company at a deep discount, according to two people familiar with the matter.

In September, BlackRock, an American multinational investment company headquartered in New York, has expanded its crypto service offerings by launching a new exchange-traded fund (ETF) that provides exposure to blockchain and crypto companies for their European clients.

Binance recently confirmed that the crypto exchange has invested in Musk’s Twitter deal. In a sentence, Binance quoted its co-founder, billionaire Changpeng Zhao (CZ), saying that Binance had agreed to spend $500 for Musk to acquire Twitter as part of his strategy to bring social media and news. sites in the world web3.

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