Binance Acquisition Tokocrypto, Indonesia's Leading Crypto Exchange Platform

Binance is the owner of Tokocrypto. (Photo; Doc. Tokocrypto)

JAKARTA One of the leading crypto exchange platforms in Indonesia, Tokocrypto, was officially acquired by Binance. As is known, Binance is the largest crypto trading company in the world based on its trading volume.

Tokocrypto has been officially registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Supervisory Agency (CoFTRA) of the Indonesian Ministry of Trade. This is one of the leading exchangers in the country.

Binance is not a new name for Tokocrypto, because in 2020 the crypto trading company led by Changpeng Zhao has invested in Tokocrypto and owns about 60 percent of the company's shares.

With this acquisition, Binance will own 100 percent of Tokocrypto's shares. Reporting from Coindesk Indonesia, Binance will gradually increase its share ownership to around 100 percent.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has confirmed the report, stating that Binance has injected more funds to increase its holdings in Indonesia-based exchanges.

Changpeng Zhao or who is familiarly called CZ announced in a Twitter post about the increase in Binance's share ownership in Tokocrypto.

"Binance was the majority shareholder of Toko from the start. It just injected more cash and increased our share ownership a little bit," wrote Changpeng Zhao (@cz_binance), December 19, 2022.

Launching CryptoSlate, the agreement will make Binance the sole owner of the crypto exchange founded by Pang Xue Kai in 2018. Commenting on Binance's move, Pang Xue Kai stated that the acquisition would help Tokocrypto take advantage of Binance to contribute to advancing the digital economy in Indonesia.

On the other hand, Pang Xue Kai who served as CEO of Tokocrypto decided to leave his post. Pang Kai's position will be replaced by Yudhono Rawis who is appointed as interim CEO.

Furthermore, Tokocrypto plans to cut about 58 percent of its employees. This decision was taken in line with uncertain market conditions. Therefore, the company intends to downsize and plans to focus on the stock exchange business.

"It is regrettable that we have to streamline the company to ensure that we remain in a good position to deal with uncertain macroeconomic conditions and we would like to express our sincere apologies to the employees affected," said Rawis.

Furthermore, Rawis revealed that employees affected by the company's downsizing operations will be recommended so that they can continue to work in the crypto industry, including in Binance.

Meanwhile, the original token issued by Tokocrypto, Token Toko (TKO), has increased by more than 10 percent in response to Binance's acquisition. The price of the TKO token broke ATH on May 3, 2021, at the level of IDR 70,792 per token based on Coinecko data. However, at the time of writing, TKO is trading at a price of IDR 4,723. TKO ranks 411 on CoinMarketCap.