In October 2018, BTC Korean Holdings had agreed to sell 51 percent of its share in Bithumb to BK Global Consortium for $333 million. Since the deal was brokered, BK Global reportedly made a down payment of $100 million.
A deal to acquire cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb for over $300 million remains in choppy waters.
According to The Korea Herald on Monday, fintech firm BK Global Consortium’s deal to buy a majority stake in the major South Korean exchange has not yet been fully paid for.
However, sources close to the matter told the news source that BK Global pushed back the April deadline for completing the purchase on the condition that it would increase its stake in Bithumb from 51 percent to 70 percent. However, the report said BK Global has again missed a Sept. 30 deadline for the final payment.
The Herald said the firm has been seeking various partnerships or buyouts to secure the remaining capital for the acquisition.
One such investor, Cho Yoon-hyeong of electronic equipment manufacturer Cornerstone, is rumored to be contributing some $125 million toward BK Global’s exchange purchase.
On Monday, Cho disputed that the deal would fall apart following the second extension.
“The deal is proceeding smoothly, and we’re working on details with BTC Holdings.”
A Bithumb representative concurred, stating “Bithumb has stable management, so there won’t be any impact should the deal collapse.”
Crypto Exchange Binance Suspends Trading Over ‘Systems Messaging Error’
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, suspended trading on Wednesday, alerting users of an outage due to “temporary system maintenance.”The exchange has suspended deposits, withdrawals, spot trading, margin trading, person-to-person trading, lending, redemption and asset transfers from sub-accounts, margin accounts, futures accounts and wallets that hold government-issued or “fiat” currencies, according to a notice posted on the company’s website.
Futures trading is unaffected, the exchange said.
Josh Goodbody, Binance’s London-based director for growth and international business, told CoinDesk in a series of WhatsApp messages there was an “issue with an engine that pushed data around the system.”
“It was a simple systems messaging error that we wanted to fix straightaway”, Goodbody said. “Main effect was balances were slow to update.”
It’s “definitely untrue” that the exchange had suffered an internal hack, he said, referring to some posts on social media.
Binance CEO Changpeng «CZ» Zhao tweeted at 13:38 UTC there was “probably another 45-90 minutes to go” before trading resumes, while noting that was a “very rough estimate, don’t know how accurate it is.”
Just before publishing time, another tweet said systems were about to be restored «in minutes.»
In a separate post, Zhao said the exchange would “waive everyone’s margin interests for today.”
“Least we could do”, he wrote. “Will also run some big campaigns after we deploy the performance fixes.”
