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Yen surges on BOJ policy shift speculations; dollar slides to seven-month low

SINGAPORE, Jan 16 (Reuters) - The dollar fell to a seven-month low against major peers on Monday while the yen spiked to an over seven-month peak as traders ramped up bets that the Bank of Japan may make further tweaks to its yield control policy at its meeting this week.

The Aussie breached the key $0.7000 level for the first time since August, and last rose 0.54% to $0.7013, after rising as high as $0.7019 earlier in the session.

Similarly, the euro hit a fresh nine-month top of $1.08725, and was last 0.3% higher at $1.0867.

Against a basket of currencies, the U.S. dollar index slumped 0.46% to a seven-month trough at 101.79, as the greenback extended its selloff from last week after data showed that U.S consumer prices fell for the first time in more than 2-1/2 years in December.

With decades-high inflation in the world's largest economy showing signs of cooling, investors are now betting that the Fed may be nearing the end of its rate-hike cycle, and that rates would not go as high as previously feared.

"The confirmation of a deceleration in price pressures is building up hopes that CPI could fall further in coming months," said analysts at OCBC.

"An entrenched disinflation trend can reinforce expectations that the Fed could again scale back on its pace of hike beyond the February FOMC or even position for an earlier pause or dovish pivot."

The Fed's aggressive rate increases have been a huge driver of the greenback's 8% surge last year.

The Fed's aggressive rate increases have been a huge driver of the greenback's 8% surge last year.

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Markets are now pricing in a 91% chance of a 25 basis point increase by the Fed when it announces its policy decision in February, with a 9% chance of a 50 bp increase.

The Japanese yen rose to a more than seven-month peak on Monday, as expectations that the BOJ would make further tweaks to, or fully abandon, its yield control policy when it announces its monetary policy decision on Wednesday dominated market sentiment.

The yen jumped more than 0.4% to a high of 127.24 per dollar, and last bought 127.38 per dollar.

Markets have been pressing for the BOJ to shift away from its ultra-easy monetary policy, which caused the yield on Japan's benchmark 10-year government bonds to breach the central bank's new ceiling for two sessions. read more

"I think the whole world will be focused on Wednesday ... and probably the week in G10 (currencies) will be defined by what happens to the yen and yen crosses, out of that," said Ray Attrill, head of FX strategy at National Australia Bank (NAB).

"I don't think (the BOJ) has the luxury of time to say that they're going to assess and wait until Q2 or Kuroda to see out his term without making any further changes."

Current BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda will step down in April.

The BOJ's yield curve control policy has been a huge factor behind the yen's 12% slump last year, and since the central bank's shock decision last December to widen the band around its yield target, the yen has jumped more than 6%.

Sterling was last 0.45% higher at a one-month peak of $1.2288, while the kiwi similarly jumped 0.6% to $0.64235, after hitting a one-month top of $0.64255 earlier in the session.

U.S. markets are closed on Monday for a holiday, making for thin trading.

Solana Tide Surges 58% In Second Strong Week!

After collapsing more than 80 percent over the course of last year, Solana is having a stellar in 2023. The price of SOL has more than doubled this month, rising more than 58 percent to $23.70 in the last seven days, according to CoinGecko.

Not only that, but the once-celebrated "Ethereum killer" saw its highest trading volume since the week of the spectacular collapse of crypto exchange FTX, which crashed Solana along with most of the crypto market in November.

It's a remarkable rebound for Solana. Less than a month ago, SOL was closing out the year down 94 percent, hitting a two-year low of $8.17 and dropping out of the top twenty coins, per CoinGecko data.

Now, Solana briefly bumped Polygon MATIC out of the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap, which cleared $9 million on Saturday afternoon. Its price is also at its highest point since FTX fell. In one 24-hour period last weekend alone, Solana jumped 21 percent.

Solana's recent run of good news was boosted by BONK, a Solana-based meme token, which set off a flurry of buzz around Christmas and pushed the price of SOL to a seven-day high at the turn of the new year. Coin collectors seemed eager to celebrate a new dog-themed entry into the marketplace, alongside Dogecoin (DOGE) and the Ethereum-based token Shiba Inu (SHIB).

BONK logged an eye-popping 3,300% spike in the first week of the year—albeit to $0.00000487, according to CoinGecko. While a subsequent five-trillion token burn didn't keep BONK on an upward trajectory, its price sliding 69 percent last week, it's still sitting atop a $57 million market cap. In fact, its price even rose 20% over the past 48 hours.

A new Bitcoin-based encrypted chat platform has been announced at the Adopting Bitcoin conference, BLIP.

The new app, yet to be publicly released, leverages Hexum, a proprietary multilayer encryption method, also created by the team behind BLIP, that promises a more secure communication than popular end-to-end (E2E) encrypted apps.

“WhatsApp and Signal use one static private key. The Hexum encryption method gives you a private key per message or per interaction. So hacking that is very difficult,” Alejandro Muyshondt, El Salvador national security advisor and co-founder of BLIP founding company High Voltage, told Bitcoin Magazine.

Hexum’s multilayer encryption approach leverages base64, AES, SHA256 and the addition of randomly generated words.

Muyshondt explained two other key differences between BLIP and the now-popular E2E apps setup: everything goes through Lightning and a phone number is not required.

A new user can start using BLIP with an email address and a password. On BLIP’s end, Lightning nodes are leveraged and each new user gets an address , along with a hash file that serves as an account backup file.

“So [text] goes from your phone with the Hexum encryption to the Lightning network, then to a Hexum decrypting method and then to your phone,” Muyshondt detailed.

Phase one of BLIP is text-only in this “peer to Lightning to peer”-fashion. Phase two includes video calls and voice messages, for which the connection handshake happens on Lightning and the rest goes through the Tor network, leveraging BitTorrent technology.

Creators of BLIP explained that the idea behind the project is not only to provide antifragile means for unstoppable communication but also serve as a driving force of bitcoin adoption.

“We talk about bitcoin adoption and for the most part people talk about the price, whether it’s a store of value or a medium of exchange, but there’s not enough discussion about the power of the network itself,” High Voltage co-founder Rick Fisher told Bitcoin Magazine. “We might have two, three or four percent of the world that has adopted bitcoin, but there is a much larger majority right now that can get their arms around protecting their speech, and the privacy of their speech.”

The need for freedom of speech will drive a need for Bitcoin, he continued. “And because a user needs to power the app with sats, there is an inherent need to take that step to go and buy a couple of dollars worth of bitcoin. And, for 50 cents or a buck, you can power up the BLIP app and have absolute encrypted communication.”

To encompass these use cases, the team behind BLIP also announced other applications at the conference, including BLIP Freedom and a Lightning wallet –– all of which also leverage Hexum.

BLIP FREEDOM
BLIP Freedom is a bot-administered app that enables the creation of movements with large-scale dissemination of information. Focused on freedom of assembly, it protects the privacy of like-minded individuals who wish to freely communicate in the digital world.

“To get from the point of where we’re at today to a bitcoin standard, there’s a huge chasm in there that is gonna require that we can congregate, assemble, create movements, create the revolution, and that's gonna happen through communication protocols,” Fisher said.

On BLIP Freedom, the organization’s only task is to kickstart and open a channel to let people then join and crowdfund it. A user can only be kicked out of a channel with a supermajority vote (75%) from channel users, a process administered by the bot.

“Assembly begins in the digital domain,” Fisher said. “If you want to start a movement, to create a revolution, it’s gonna start on a phone. And if the overlords don’t like it, they just shut it down. They did it in Canada, they’ve done it in Iran.”

“So, really, if you can’t organize at that first-layer level and you can be deplatformed and it can be turned off, then it really makes it hard to assemble and create a movement,” he continued. “BLIP Freedom is really a movement-oriented app where people can fund it, you can receive donations and we can create, for every possible or potential movement, a messaging platform where we can disseminate large amounts of data to people without it being shut down.”

2WALLET
Hexsum and BLIP actually stem from the development of 2Wallet, a custodial bitcoin and Lightning wallet aimed at banking the unbanked in developing countries worldwide. Fisher told Bitcoin Magazine the idea was born after meeting Muyshondt at Adopting Bitcoin 2021, which closely followed the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender by El Salvador.

“We talked about the challenges ahead for El Salvador and adopting bitcoin, and at that time, Chivo had just been launched,” Fisher said, referring to the state-owned Chivo Wallet. “There wasn’t a lot of information, but we did know that adoption was going to be tricky because Chivo was rolled out without Lightning. And so for merchant adoption, these things were going to be pretty difficult. The wallet itself was also a pretty big download.”

The two partners then had an idea to create a small-download wallet that was simple, fast and secure, Fisher recounted.

BLIP and 2Wallet will be made available for download within a few weeks, but a waitlist is already available.

Genesis’ Crypto-Lending Unit Is Halting Customer Withdrawals in Wake of FTX Collapse

The lending arm of crypto investment bank Genesis Global Trading is temporarily suspending redemptions and new loan originations in the wake of FTX’s collapse, Interim CEO Derar Islim told customers on a call Wednesday.
The unit, known as Genesis Global Capital, serves an institutional client base and had $2.8 billion in total active loans as of the end of the third quarter of 2022, according to the company’s website.
Genesis Trading, which acts as Genesis Global Capital’s broker/dealer, is independently capitalized and operated separately from that lending unit, Islim said. He added that Genesis’ trading and custody services remain fully operational.
Islim told the participants on the call that Genesis is exploring solutions for the lending unit, including finding a source of fresh liquidity. He said Genesis intends to detail its plan to clients next week.
Genesis owner Digital Currency Group (DCG) is also the parent company of CoinDesk.
"Today Genesis Global Capital, Genesis's lending business, made the difficult decision to temporarily suspend redemptions and new loan originations. This decision was made in response to the extreme market dislocation and loss of industry confidence caused by the FTX implosion," said Amanda Cowie, vice president of communications and marketing at DCG.
"This decision impacts the lending business at Genesis and does not affect Genesis’s trading or custody businesses. Importantly, this decision has no impact on the business operations of DCG and our other wholly owned subsidiaries," Cowie added.
The decision follows a punishing period for the industry after this month’s implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto companies FTX and Alameda Research. Islim said FTX’s dramatic fall had spurred withdrawal requests that exceeded Genesis’ current liquidity.
Last week, Genesis disclosed that its derivatives unit had about $175 million in locked funds in its FTX trading account. As a result, DCG opted to strengthen Genesis’ balance sheet with an equity infusion of $140 million.
The announcement was noted by Gemini, the crypto exchange and custodian that has a partnership with Genesis.
"We are working with the Genesis team to help customers redeem their funds from the Earn program as quickly as possible," Gemini said in a statement. "We are disappointed that the Earn program [service agreement] will not be met, but we are encouraged by Genesis’ and its parent company Digital Currency Group’s commitment to doing everything in their power to fulfill their obligations to customers under the Earn program."
Genesis suffered major losses earlier this year due to the failure of hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC).

FTX’s Failure Is Sparking a Massive Regulatory Response

A hammer is going to fall on crypto exchange FTX. The question is how heavy it might be.
The collapse of FTX will likely give rise to a number of criminal and civil actions against the exchange and its executives, like former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. It’s also likely to push forward actual regulatory changes, either via lawmakers or through federal agencies themselves, a number of individuals told CoinDesk.
FTX filed for bankruptcy last Friday, days after halting withdrawals and a little over a week after CoinDesk first reported that the balance sheet of FTX sister company Alameda Research held a surprisingly large amount of FTT, an exchange token issued by FTX. FTX was “fine,” Bankman-Fried said in response to questions about his exchange’s solvency, before a series of events showed otherwise.
As a result, several state and federal agencies launched or expanded investigations into the company, including the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Securities Commission of the Bahamas and the Bahamas’ Financial Crimes Investigation Branch.
Members of the U.S. Congress from both political parties are also calling for further action as a result of the collapse. Some lawmakers are even talking about holding hearings, potentially by the end of the year, said Ron Hammond of the Blockchain Association.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said in a statement that the collapse is “a dramatic demonstration of both the inherent risks of digital assets and the critical weaknesses in the industry that has grown up around them.”
Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are among those in Congress calling for investigations into the collapse as well as Sam Bankman-Fried, who was a major party donor.
Other lawmakers, like Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the current ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), the outgoing ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, said it was regulatory ambiguity in the U.S. that allowed FTX to grow as large as it had as an offshore exchange. They called for Congress or regulatory agencies to provide clearer guidelines for crypto exchanges to operate.
The fact that regulators apparently had no view into some of the major projects that fell apart this year – such as Celsius, Three Arrows, Luna and now FTX – is “precisely the problem,” said an industry participant who works closely with policymakers.
Still, the individual told CoinDesk that they don’t expect any major legislative action to occur this year. Most likely, Congress will look at bills like the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act, a bill that Bankman-Fried supported but was written prior to that, in the upcoming year.

Investigations:

According to an attorney who requested anonymity, the SEC may have an easier time kicking off the investigation just due to its mandate.
“The SEC is in a much better position to go to court and get a freeze [on assets] if they believe there's a reason to do that,” the attorney said. “The SEC also has a less cumbersome process for subpoenaing testimony and freezing documents.”
The SEC and DOJ are likely to cooperate though, to the extent that DOJ investigators may sit in on SEC interviews.
Read more: 'FTX Has Been Hacked': Crypto Disaster Worsens as Exchange Sees Mysterious Outflows Exceeding $600M
The fact that FTX is registered and headquartered in the Bahamas is not likely to impact these investigations, the attorney said. FTX has various U.S. connections, which is all the SEC and DOJ need to assert jurisdiction for their investigations.
FTX appears to be preparing for these investigations, with FTX US General Counsel Ryne Miller having already told the entire company to preserve documents.
A former federal prosecutor told CoinDesk that the bankruptcy court may also shed light on the situation, thus assisting government investigators with their probes.
"The bankruptcy court has the ability to now oversee the company and to obtain information from the company that, let's say the DOJ might not have been able to obtain as easily pre-bankruptcy, and they'll likely have access to a new trustee or an examiner and be able to learn in essentially real-time what's going on,” the former prosecutor said.
Executives like Bankman-Fried may also “be in a tough spot with respect to” deciding whether to cooperate or assert Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, the former prosecutor added.

Tweeting exhibits:

A complicating factor – for FTX anyway – may be the fact that Bankman-Fried has tweeted his way through his company’s collapse.
On Nov. 7, a few days after CoinDesk first reported on Alameda’s balance sheet, the one-time crypto wunderkind tweeted that “FTX has enough to cover all client holdings.” He went so far as to say that speculation about his company’s solvency was a rumor spurred by a competitor (Binance) but that “assets are fine.”
Later in the week, he tweeted that FTX US was also fine and fully liquid. Only hours later, FTX US warned users it might suspend withdrawals.

Within a day, Bankman-Fried agreed to a buyout/bailout of his reeling exchange by rival Binance (Binance walked away from the deal less than 24 hours later, precipitating the bankruptcy filing, including for FTX US). The tweets were deleted.
“It’s a complete nightmare,” said Ken White, a former federal prosecutor and a partner at the Brown White & Osborn law firm. “This is a situation where all sorts of agencies are going to be looking at this, the SEC, the FTC, and probably the Department of Justice. There are all sorts of potential criminal and civil consequences – lawsuits. Civil lawsuits are a certainty. And here he is sort of tweeting out his thoughts about it. It's every attorney’s nightmare of what a client might do.”
Read more: Washington, D.C.’s Buddy Sam Bankman-Fried Has Some Explaining to Do
Other attorneys agree, including John Sparacino, a principal at McKool Smith, who suspected Bankman-Fried did not run his tweets through a lawyer.
The former FTX CEO’s conduct is “going to be under a microscope,” said Sparacino, and it seems likely that some of Bankman-Fried’s tweets may come back to haunt him as litigation works its way through the courts.
Sparacino said he did not know if there were any regulatory or criminal aspects to the tweets, but would still expect them to show up in litigation.
The fact that Bankman-Fried repeatedly took to Twitter to reassure his exchange’s users that everything was fine before the various stages of its fall could make any case against him easier, said White, calling the tweets “extraordinarily foolish.”
“It creates new bases for criminal or civil claims against him just based on those tweets,” White said. “So if he says that everything's fine, that their assets are real assets, and that's not true, then that can be securities fraud, and wire fraud, all sorts of other stuff, not to mention all sorts of civil causes of action … It is just disastrously reckless.”
Investigators may look at what Bankman-Fried’s tweets would indicate to individual investors, as well as what FTX’s representations were. And while it is entirely possible that Bankman-Fried may have believed that his exchange was safe and stable before being proven wrong by unanticipated events, it is also possible that he tweeted inaccurate information. The exchange’s ties to Alameda will also raise scrutiny – if Bankman-Fried was transferring user funds into Alameda and losing those investments, that may become a liability during litigation.
Asked what advice he’d give Bankman-Fried, White said, “My advice is shut the f*** up or I quit.”
“Even if the money is good, sometimes you just don't as a lawyer,” he said. “You don't want to be attached to someone who's deciding to self-immolate.”

Crypto.com Experiences Mass Withdrawals, Is CRO the Next FTT?

The past weekend was no less than a nightmare for the crypto space, as market participants and influencers went against Crypto.com. Similar to that of FTX, Crypto.com also had huge CRO and SHIB in their reserves which created huge panic within the market. The rounds of the platform facing liquidity issues quickly circulated within the space, due to which the CRO price was very badly affected.

It all began when the platform accidentally transferred nearly 400 ETH from Crypto.com to the Gate wallet a fortnight ago. While the CDC stated that these tokens had to be sent to their cold wallet, they were transferred to a whitelisted corporate address. Meanwhile, many believed that it was just another coverup for the proof-of-reserve with Changpeng Zhao information
.
On the other hand, the outgoing transactions spiked high on CDC with more than 20K while the incoming transaction maintained a single-digit value

Meanwhile, the CDC has still not undergone full scrutiny as $1 billion is claimed to have been sent to FTX but turns out to be an actual exposure of only $10 million. However, the founder cleared up the claims and said that the platform has very little exposure to FTX and is used in trading venues to hedge customers’ trades. According to the CDC founder Kris Marszalek information
, Coinbase also has $15 million stuck at FTX for the same reason.

As a result, the platform recorded huge outflows of more than 90,000 Ethereum transactions against its normal range of 6,000 to 6,500 transactions per day. However, the crypto influencers do believe the CRO price may also follow the fate of FTT and do not appear to be convinced with the reserves of more than $2 billion, having nearly 34% in BTC and 21.56% in SHIB in their portfolio.

Security has been in the spotlight in recent times, as the recent episode illustrates the normal routine of crypto exchanges. Moreover, it highlights the point when the market participants are quite sure about the project and when they fall into FUD & quickly withdraw.

Visa Terminates FTX Debit Card Program

The world’s largest payment processor – Visa – has terminated ties with FTX less than a month after introducing a new debit card program.

Deeming the situation with the debt-ridden cryptocurrency exchange “unfortunate,” Visa’s spokesperson told Reuters that the company is “monitoring developments closely.”

The financial services company’s official statement read,
“We have terminated our global agreements with FTX and their U.S. debit card program is being wound down by their issuer.”

Visa announced a collaboration with FTX in October this year to launch account-linked Visa debit cards in 40 new countries.
The focus of the partnership was the expansion of the debit card program to Latin America, Asia, and Europe after its introduction to US customers.
FTX and 130 affiliated companies, including its sister trading firm Alameda Research, filed for Chapter 11 Proceedings in the United States on November 13.
Sam Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO of the company. His position was taken over by the veteran Wall Street bankruptcy lawyer, John J. Ray III, who notably served as the chairman of the disgraced energy behemoth – Enron – in the early-mid 2000s.
SBF, on the other hand, has faced tremendous backlash from the crypto community as the drama unfolded last week.
FTX started the year with a $400 million Series C funding round, taking its valuation to over $32 billion.
In yet another related development, US-headquartered crypto exchange Kraken announced freezing the accounts associated with “FTX Group, Alameda Research, and their executives” after engaging with law enforcement agencies.

Author: Chayanika Deka

Binance Starts Recovery Fund for Crypto Projects Facing Liquidity Crisis

CZ said that more details will be announced in the coming days, and said that the fund is open to industry co-investors.
Tron founder Justin Sun said that Tron, Huobi Global and Poloniex will support Binance in its initiative. Huobi Global also confirmed this in a tweet.
This announcement comes a month after Binance Pool said it was committing $500 million in the form of a lending facility for struggling bitcoin miners.
Binance's BNB Token is up 3% on the news. Bitcoin and Ether also both gained 4% after the announcement was made.
In remarks made Monday at the B20 Summit in Indonesia, CZ said he wanted the industry, as well as regulators, to take responsibility for cleaning up its act.
"We will we will try to collect the other industry players together to form an industry association globally, and try to deal with some of the common standards in business," CZ said, citing recent crypto market events as a reason for the initiative to happen "very soon."

First Mover Americas: FTX Faces Criminal Probe

Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX faces a criminal investigation in the Bahamas following its dramatic collapse last week. Authorities in the Caribbean country where FTX has its headquarters are investigating whether any criminal misconduct occurred in the exchange’s decline and bankruptcy. Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange went from being one of the world’s largest to filing for bankruptcy in barely a week, after a CoinDesk article raised questions about the financial stability of its sister company Alameda Research.
The native token of Binance-owned Trust Wallet soared 80% on Sunday after CEO Changpeng Zhao encouraged crypto users to take personal control of their digital assets. Zhao made the warning following the collapse of Binance’s rival FTX, which Binance briefly agreed to rescue before aborting its plan after it took a closer look at FTX’s balance sheet. Trust Wallet is a decentralized hot wallet facilitating the storage of cryptocurrencies. Its native token TWT allows holders to participate in decision making related to the app’s features. At the time of writing, TWT was up about 50% in the last 24 hours at $2.44, according to data by CoinMarketCap.
Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek has attempted to assuage fears that the exchange could be the next to face a liquidity crisis. Crypto.com’s native token CRO has dropped around 45% in the last week, while its daily volume was down to about $284 million in October compared with last year’s highs of around $4 billion. In a YouTube interview, Marszalek reiterated that Crypto.com’s balance sheet is strong and its exposure to FTT was limited. He added that CRO, unlike FTX’s native token FTT, has never been used as loan collateral.

Binance Reaffirms Transparency Commitment, Unveils $40B in Stablecoin Reserves

Binance pledges to be transparent about its reserves to convince consumers that it has them in full. According to CZ, this information was always available, but it is now simpler to understand and obtain.

The exchange will be revealing cold wallet addresses and balances for its top six currencies, according to an announcement made by Binance CEO CZ on November 10. The action is a reaction to the effects of this week's collapse of the FTX exchange. The former second-largest centralized exchange has collapsed due to overleveraging and a wave of withdrawals.

40 billion dollars worth of stablecoins
Binance pledges to be transparent about its reserves to convince consumers that it has them in full. According to CZ, this information was always available, but it is now simpler to understand and obtain. According to the website, there are 475,000 bitcoins in the cold wallet of Binance (1). This is worth about $8 billion at the current market price. At 4.8 million ETH, its Ethereum reserves are under$6 a billion now.

According to the cold wallet listings, the USDT, BUSD, and USDC stablecoins totaled about $40 billion. With a staggering 27% of all stablecoins in circulation, Binance is a colossus regarding stablecoin reserves. The underpinning of that enormous hoard of stablecoins hasn't yet been properly exposed. The business also said it was working on a Merkle tree proof-of-reserves that will be available in the upcoming weeks.

CZ suggested that all cryptocurrency exchanges implement proof-of-reserves on November 9. "Banks rely on little amounts of reserves. Bitcoin exchanges shouldn't, he continued. Chainlink (2), a supplier of data oracles, has highlighted its proof-of-reserve tools.
The exchange will be revealing cold wallet addresses and balances for its top six currencies, according to an announcement made by Binance CEO CZ on November 10. The action is a reaction to the effects of this week's collapse of the FTX exchange. The former second-largest centralized exchange has collapsed due to overleveraging and a wave of withdrawals.

40 billion dollars worth of stablecoins
Binance pledges to be transparent about its reserves to convince consumers that it has them in full. According to CZ, this information was always available, but it is now simpler to understand and obtain. According to the website, there are 475,000 bitcoins in the cold wallet of Binance (1). This is worth about $8 billion at the current market price. At 4.8 million ETH, its Ethereum reserves are under$6 a billion now.

According to the cold wallet listings, the USDT, BUSD, and USDC stablecoins totaled about $40 billion. With a staggering 27% of all stablecoins in circulation, Binance is a colossus regarding stablecoin reserves. The underpinning of that enormous hoard of stablecoins hasn't yet been properly exposed. The business also said it was working on a Merkle tree proof-of-reserves that will be available in the upcoming weeks.

CZ suggested that all cryptocurrency exchanges implement proof-of-reserves on November 9. "Banks rely on little amounts of reserves. Bitcoin exchanges shouldn't, he continued. Chainlink (2), a supplier of data oracles, has highlighted its proof-of-reserve tools.