Binance users withdraw $2 billion in 24 hours

Binance , the world’s dominant crypto exchange by a wide margin, is battling massive FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) – collectively bad press – amid the fallout that’s followed the collapse of rival platform FTX.

Reports of investigations against the exchange and its top brass is just part of the negative news that’s contributed to jitters among users. And according to data from Hong Kong-based research firm Nansen, the prevailing environment has seen Binance record large net outflows.

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Binance sees $2 billion in 24-hour netflows

Per Nansen, outflows over the past week total more than $8.7 billion – against inflows of about $5.1 billion. The netflow this past week is around $3.7 billion, according to the data on Nansen’s Exchange Flows dashboard.

But as the broader industry jitters mount, Binance has seen its largest net outflow in 24 hours. On the day former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested, Binance’s 24-hour netflow stood at nearly $2 billion. The latest net outflows between 12 and 13 December represent the exchange’s biggest daily withdrawals going back to June, Nansen tweeted.

Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, who has slammed the persistent FUD directed at his company, acknowledged on Tuesday that indeed the exchange had witnessed significant withdrawals.

However, he said this was not out of the ordinary as the platform has handled such numbers before. He also expressed confidence in the exchange’s financial health, noting that such huge withdrawals could be the stress test that centralised exchanges, or CEXs, need.

“We saw some withdrawals today (net $1.14b ish). We have seen this before. Some days we have net withdrawals; some days we have net deposits. Business as usual for us. I actually think it is a good idea to “stress test withdrawals” on each CEX on a rotating basis.”

The Binance Coin (BNB/USD) saw early sell-off as the withdrawals mounted, falling to lows of $258. The token did pare some of the losses during the US market hours on Tuesday as crypto mirrored early reaction in the equities market to cooling inflation data.

BNB was trading around $273, about 1.2% down in the past 24 hours and nearly 6% down over the past week.