According to new research, Binance might have sold, invested, or reallocated up to $8 billion of its $14 billion corporate reserves last month.
The massive quantities of crypto were listed as excess collateral on Binance’s December proof-of-reserves — above the 100% guarantee on customer holdings — but had disappeared as of February 1.
At the end of January, Binance reported 2,746 bitcoin (BTC), 275,725,782 tether (USDT), 174 ether (ETH), 4,869,719 BNB, and 4,179 solana (SOL) in non-customer net balances.
Those figures are drastically lower than its December 2024 snapshot: 46,896 BTC, 2,989,902,855 USDT, 216,312 ETH, 5,839,372 BNB, and 442,234 SOL.
Charts of these corporate assets show Binance’s non-customer holdings cratering to near two-year lows. The USD value of the decline tallies north of $8 billion.
The reasons for the decline were not immediately obvious. Some observers speculated that regulatory settlements or FTX clawbacks might explain several billion dollars worth. Others simply thought the company was making investments or expanding business operations.
Founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has not responded to the report today, nor have CEO Richard Teng or Binance’s various accounts on X. Binance similarly did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
Read more: Binance founder CZ made $12B overnight when Donald Trump won
According to its snapshot from the end of January, Binance claims to hold 100% of all customers’ assets across the 34 crypto assets monitored via Merkle root hash in its so-called proof-of-reserves.
Protos has reached out to Binance for comment and will update this story if we receive a reply.
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Source: https://protos.com/binance-moved-8-billion-off-its-proof-of-reserves/