Binance Turned Down Justin Sun’s Offer to Buy His Stake in Huobi

Sources familiar with the matter said that the world’s largest crypto exchange Binance recently turned down an offer to acquire Justin Sun’s ownership in crypto exchange Huobi.

The sources further added that Binance didn’t show interest due to the rumors that crypto exchange Huobi has ties with mainland China. Last month in March, Justin Sun showed interest in securing a license in Hong Kong and said that the new entity should operate as Huobi Hong Kong.

There’s quite a secrecy around Justin Sun’s scope of involvement with the Huobi exchange. Last year in October 2022, a company named About Capital purchased a stake in Huobi. Although Sun’s representative confirmed that he’s not involved with About, earlier in January Huobi confirmed that he’s the leader of the company. As per Bloomberg, Sun had paid close to $1 billion in acquiring a controlling stake in Huobi via Hong Kong-based asset manager About Capital.

The source familiar with the matter told CoinDesk that Binance was led to believe regarding Sun’s majority stake in Huobi. Besides, the source also added that Sun’s proposal was made directly to Binance Chief Changpeng Zhao last week.

Justin Sun Denies the Rumors

Soon after CoinDesk published the story, Justin Sun took to Twitter denying a potential acquisition of Huobi Global by Binance. In his tweet, Justin Sun wrote:

“We have always regarded @binance as one of our most important partners and will continue to work closely with them on all levels. However, I must point out that in the past week or so, I have not proposed any offer to @cz_binance regarding the purchase of @HuobiGlobal, nor have we even discussed Huobi in the past week or so”.

Despite the rally in the crypto market this year, crypto exchange Huobi Global’s native token has continued to face struggles. A Bloomberg report from last week also noted that Justin Sun was in search of potential investors.

Justin Sun has always maintained his position as the advisor to the company. However, when the exchange faced liquidity issues earlier this year, Sun pumped a total of $200 million of his own wealth to support the exchange.

Last year in October 2022, Sun also said that he owns “tens of millions” of Huobi’s native token.