Binance is under pressure from different quarters. A Coindesk report on early Tuesday said that the platform has seen a net withdrawal of $902 million in the last 24 hours. This is the second-highest outflow for Binance since November 13, two days after FTX filed for bankruptcy.
Binance has nearly $62 billion of assets on its platform. In the latest, Binance has paused the withdrawal of USDC, saying the platform is currently undertaking a token swap involving USDC, a stablecoin that is used by investors to swap tokens and move digital assets from one platform to another without requiring fiat currencies. It’s believed that Binance is swapping tokens to shore up its USDC reserves so that it can process customers’ withdrawals without any difficulty.
The same Coindesk report also talked about a pending investigation into money laundering charges against Binance by the US Department of Justice.
These FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) factors played out in the backdrop of Binance releasing a Proof of Reserves (POR) report by the audit firm, Mazars, that said its BTC holdings are over-collateralized. But instead of instilling confidence among the investors, the PoR report was flayed for its narrow scope and not providing information about overall liabilities.
Recently, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao commented on a reported mismatch of BTC holdings and liabilities of Grayscale, the largest bitcoin fund, and Coinbase which provides custodian services to Grayscale’s BTC stash. Grayscale is a wing of Digital Currency Group (DCG), which also owns Coindesk. So in the current spate of news surrounding Binance, many people see Coindesk taking a shot at Binance for CZ’s comments involving Grayscale and Coinbase in the previous weeks.
