Tim Stokely, the founding father of OnlyFans, and a cryptocurrency basis have joined forces to put a late-stage bid for the acquisition of TikTok’s U.S. operations from ByteDance.
What Occurred: The bid was put forth this week by Zoop, Stokely’s newest enterprise, and the HBAR Basis, which manages the Hedera HBAR/USD blockchain community, based on particulars shared with Benzinga.
The official X account of HBAR additionally posted a cryptic message with the TikTok brand and reposted media studies in regards to the bid. Zoop didn’t instantly return Benzinga’s request for a remark.
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“We’re dedicated to making sure TikTok’s U.S. operations stay below American possession and governance,” stated RJ Phillips, Zoop co-founder and CEO. “Our bid for TikTok isn’t nearly altering possession—it’s about creating a brand new paradigm the place each creators and their communities profit instantly from the worth they collectively generate.”
Not like OnlyFans, which is thought for grownup leisure, Zoop is a mainstream content material platform that pays each creators and followers.
Hedera is a public blockchain community that enables for the event of decentralized functions on high of it. HBAR lies on the middle of the community, serving to safe it via staking.
The community attracted criticism for deceptive advertising final 12 months after a posting about BlackRock tokenizing a U.S. Treasury cash market fund on its blockchain. The announcement despatched the token hovering. Nevertheless, when BlackRock clarified that it was not actively concerned within the tokenization course of and denied any industrial relationship with Hedera, the token got here crashing down.
In March 2023, an attacker exploited the sensible contract code of the community to switch Hedera Token Service (HTS) tokens from focused accounts to their very own account, resulting in the community being taken offline.
Why It Issues: This bid comes amid a flurry of curiosity in TikTok. Amazon reportedly made a last-minute bid to amass the favored content material creation platform in its entirety, simply days earlier than the favored video app faces a U.S. ban if it doesn’t sever ties with its Chinese language mum or dad firm, ByteDance.
Final month, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian expressed his intention to amass TikTok’s U.S. operations and transition it to a blockchain-based platform. Ohanian joined Venture Liberty—a consortium led by billionaire Frank McCourt to buy the platform and transition it into an open-source, decentralized protocol.
Value Motion: On the time of writing, HBAR was exchanging fingers at $0.1660, up 0.25% over the past 24 hours, based on knowledge from Benzinga Professional. Yr-to-date, the cryptocurrency has tumbled 43%.
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