In light of the FTX liquidity crisis and the almost-acquisition by Binance, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao assured his community that his network would provide full transparency on asset holdings.
On Nov. 10, Binance published a new page titled “Proof of Assets” on which all details are available of its on-chain activity for its hot and cold wallet addresses. This comes only two days after the initial tweet from CZ on Nov. 8, in which he pledged to create a proof of reserve mechanism to ensure “full transparency” to the community.
Binance released an official statement on the new page, in which the company said this is the next time in its “commitment to transparency and fostering trust in the ecosystem” but also that it is only a starting point.
The final goal is to create a Merkle Tree proof of funds, which will be shared with the community in the following weeks, according to the exchange.
“Our objective is to allow users of our platform to be aware and make informed decisions that are aligned with their financial goals."
The announcement also included a snapshot of hot and cold wallet addresses at approx. Nov.10, 2022, at 12:00 am UTC.
In the meantime, here is a snapshot of our hot and cold wallet addresses taken on November 10, 2022 at 12:00am UTC.
— Binance (@binance) November 10, 2022
Networks included: BTC, ETH, BSC, BNB, TRX.#BTC - 475K BTC $ETH - 4.8M ETH$USDT - 17.6B USDT#BUSD - 21.7B BUSD$USDC - 601M USDC#BNB - 58M BNB
Additionally, the announcement reiterated that the company’s Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) has been topped at $1 billion. The initial statement came in a tweet from CZ on Nov. 9. And was said to be done “in light of recent price fluctuations."
Users on social media responded to the publicized numbers, with Reddit users worrying about not seeing Monero (XMR) listed on the new proof of assets page yet still being available for purchase through the exchange.
Many users across platforms including Twitter and Reddit have said this is a good start but we’ll need reliability tests.
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As the market fumbles in response to the FTX - Binance incident, other crypto platforms have voiced their support of proof of reserve mechanism for their own communities.
In a tweet on Nov. 10, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said he believes that it should be necessary for crypto platforms to publicly share their proof of reserves. Moreover, Marszalek said the platform will be publishing its audited proof of reserves in the upcoming future.
Additionally both OKX and Kucoin released statements on Twitter in which the platforms also committed to publicizing proof of reserves in the coming months.