The collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX is causing havoc in the cryptocurrencies market. Prices are under water and many people are panicking. After Binance decided to suddenly stop taking over FTX, the situation surrounding FTX seems unbearable. Yesterday you could read that the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), had promised his followers through a tweet that his exchange will soon make its reserves public. This is also known as a Merkle-tree proof-of-reserves. According to CZ, all exchanges should follow this policy. This would increase the customer’s confidence that an exchange actually manages all of the customers’ deposits.
Merkle-tree proof of reserves means that an independent third party records all customer balances and converts them into a cryptographic Merkle Tree. This anonymizes the data to protect privacy, but allows users to compare customers’ total balances against the exchange’s total assets.
Exchanges are chasing Binance
A few hours after CZ announced that Binance will be fully transparent, the official Twitter account from crypto exchange OKX also announced that they will deliver proof-of-reserves within 30 days. OKX also indicated that it is a necessity for all major crypto exchanges to adopt a proof-of-reserves policy after the FTX fiasco. Yesterday, the exchange announced that they will make their reserves transparent as soon as possible.
for #OKXtransparency, risk management, & consumer protection come first.
We’re hiring Armanino for auditing & will publish an auditable Merkle POF asap.
Here are 23 BTC addresses (~69K BTC) & 13 ERC20 addresses (~ $2+ BN) as a 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁 of our reserves for users to verify.
— OKX (@okx) Nov 9, 2022
The CEO of KuCoin, Johnny Lu, also has on Twitter announced that KuCoin will be fully transparent about their reserves within a month.
“Protecting user funds is a top priority at KuCoin. We will be releasing Merkle-tree proof-of-reserves in about a month. We work closely with authoritative auditing bodies to ensure the accuracy and veracity of the numbers and information we provide to our users and to build trust and transparency in the industry.”
The CEO of Crypto.com is the latest in the line that has announced to go after Binance. Kris Marszalek also indicates that Crypto.com also shares the belief that it is necessary for crypto platforms to make their reserves public.
Crypto.com pauses stablecoin withdrawals on Solana
The popular crypto exchange announced via email that it had suspended all withdrawals and deposits for Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) on the Solana (SOL) network. No reason was given as to why the exchange had made this decision. The email does state that customers can withdraw and deposit USDT and USDC through other supported networks as usual.