Analysts say Binance’s $2.2 billion outflows don’t suggest a bank run yet

After the CFTC sued Binance on March 27, all eyes have been on the exchange’s publicly available list of wallets holding its clients’ crypto funds. 

Since the announcement, the exchange has seen $2.2 billion of cryptocurrency flow out of the exchange (a period of around 45 hours), according to data collected by The Block Research. Part of this was caused by an initial flurry of small withdrawals in the first hour following the news.

Yet, during the same time period, $1.3 billion of cryptocurrency was sent to the exchange — meaning a net outflow of $900 million.

Bank run or bombastic tactics?

“No real sign of a bank run yet, feels like fears around this have been much lower than the whole solvency fears period at the end of last year,” said Nansen Data Journalist Martin Lee in a Telegram message.

Lee noted that Binance has seen higher than normal withdrawals over the last few weeks, with average daily withdrawals of $385 million — in terms of Ethereum-based tokens. He added that $1.3 billion of withdrawals took place on the day of the CFTC news, but this was well under the $3 billion that left the exchange on Dec. 13, 2022.

“I’ve seen a lot of bombastic headlines about the outflows Binance has experienced but they are actually less than normal,” said Tom Dunleavy, founder of Dunleavy Investment Research and former senior research analyst at Messari, in a Twitter DM. 

Binance’s inflows and outflows over the last year. Image: 21Shares.

“They hold $64 billion in on-chain assets with ~50% of that in stables. No signs of a bank run and with those numbers it would be extremely unlikely,” he added.

Binance’s wallets are largely filled with stablecoins and top cryptocurrencies. The stablecoin tether makes up 28.7% of its reserves, according to crypto data provider Nansen, while bitcoin makes up 23.5% and ether 12.4%. These are followed by BUSD and BNB. These five holdings make up 80% of the cryptocurrencies in Binance’s wallets.

The lawsuit claimed that Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, still served U.S. customers and tried to increase its presence in the region, despite public assertions that it was not available to U.S. customers. It claims that Binance executives replaced data referring to U.S. customers with the word “UNKWN,” short for unknown.

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