In Brief:
- Binance US to close its pre-IPO funding round in the next one to two months.
- Zhao said, The exchange is raising “a couple hundred million” in the round.
- An earlier effort to raise funding was thwarted by investor concerns over its independence from Binance US’s parent company.
On November 19, at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum Changpeng “CZ” Zhao,the founder and CEO of the BNB’s parent company Binance, disclosed that Binance US will wrap its pre-IPO funding round in the next one to two months.
This news comes after reports of “investor’s concerns over independence from Binance US’s parent company thwarted Binance’s early fundraising efforts”
Zhao said the new funding round will “close in about a month or two.” The exchange is raising “a couple hundred million” in the round, Zhao added. He also mentioned that he was not clear on the exact number.
On IPO, Zhao said, “For an IPO perspective, it’s probably best to have a few rounds of financing before that.” Thus, implying that Zhao did not completely rule out an IPO for the Binance global entity, but said it is a much larger company and it would have to look into where it could become a publicly traded firm.
He further informed , “To be honest, in five, 10 years, we might see crypto exchanges merge with stock exchanges,” which points out to the fact that Binance.com could list on a crypto exchange.
Noteworthily, the exchange is considering lowering fees for users to “maximize shareholder value” in the long term.
On being asked about regulations, he reiterated his viewpoint that his company was in regular talks with regulators. “We want regulation, I am not a complete libertarian, I’m not an anarchist,” he said.
Zhao also informed that Binance will “very shortly” announce where the company has decided to locate its headquarters and was communicating its plan to regulators first. In the past, too, Zhao had indicated the relocation of the headquarters in France by next year.
