Sam Bankman-Fried Says He’d Consider Acquiring Troubled Crypto Miners Next

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FTX co-founder and CEO Sam-Bankman Fried is open to acquisitions of troubled crypto miners in order to help stem contagion in the crypto industry, he told Bloomberg in an interview Friday.

• “When we think about the mining industry, they do play a little bit of role in the possible contagion spread, to the extent that there are miners that were collateralizing borrows with their mining rigs,” Bankman-Fried said. “There might come along a really compelling opportunity for us – I definitely don’t want to discount that possibility.”

• To be sure, Bankman-Fried tweeted that he wasn’t “particularly looking at miners, but sure, happy to have conversations with any companies,” following the publication of the story.

• Private and publicly listed crypto miners are facing margin calls and defaults after having racked up debts anywhere between $2 billion to $4 billion to finance the construction of their gargantuan facilities across North America, according to data compiled by CoinDesk and industry participants.

• FTX just announced on Friday that it had made a deal with crypto lender BlockFi to provide BlockFi with a $400 million credit facility and potentially acquire it for as much as $240 million. And Alameda Research, which is owned by Bankman-Fried, had previously extended a cash/USDC loan of $200 million and a revolving credit facility for 15,000 bitcoin ($294 million) to beleaguered crypto exchange Voyager Digital.

• Shares of many publicly-traded mining companies are down by 75% or more year to date.

Read More: FTX Passed on Deal to Purchase Celsius Due to Deficient Balance Sheet: Report

UPDATE (July 1, 21:54 UTC): Added Bankman-Fried's tweet in second bullet point.