Who could buy TikTok?

President Joe Biden signed a bill into law on Wednesday that would ban TikTok in the United States unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells the popular social media app.

Now the question is, who could buy it?

Several potential US buyers are already exploring the idea of purchasing the app, which boasts 170 million US users.

Leading the pack is former Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who announced last month that he is looking into buying the popular video app, CNN reported.

“It's a great business and I'm going to put together a group to buy TikTok,” Mnuchin told CNBC.

Mr Mnuchin, who initially led the Trump administration’s effort to ban TikTok, has reportedly suggested a deal that excludes the app’s algorithm, which is seen as an important asset to the app; however, such a deal could get around a Chinese government export restrictions on recommendation algorithms.

It would be a “disgrace if [Mnuchin] was allowed to turn around and use that classified information to further enrich himself and his Saudi buddies,” Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden told The Washington Post last month.

The multi-million dollar purchase could also turn Mr Mnuchin into a rival to his former boss, Donald Trump, who is the chairman and leading shareholder of the company that owns Truth Social.

Kevin O’Leary, the Canadian chairman of the private venture capital firm O’Leary Ventures, has also expressed interest and like Mr Mnuchin, has said that a potential acquisition of TikTok may have to exclude TikTok’s algorithm. He has suggested an opening bid between $20bn and $30bn.

The ban has already happened elsewhere. Billions of people live in countries where TikTok is unavailable in one form or another.

But there is still a