Binance Labs – the investment arm of crypto exchange Binance – reportedly made a historical return on investment, reaching as high as 2,100%.

As a result, the total assets under management have hit $7.5 billion, according to the latest blog post.

The platform also assured users its “financial status is very healthy” and added that it has sufficient capital reserves to cover day-to-day operations and ride out any challenging cycles.

Binance Breaks Silence

Binance said all users’ assets in its platform are supported 1:1. Moreover, clients also have the right to withdraw coins at any given time, thereby quashing rumors about sufficient reserves for users to do so.

Taking a jibe at FTX, whose founders are being accused of misappropriating user funds, Binance stated that it will not embezzle such assets for any transactions or investments. The exchange further clarified that it has no debts, nor is it on the list of creditors of any company that has recently gone bankrupt.

“A few negative cases do not represent the entire industry. Many people started to doubt and attack the encryption industry as a whole through a few negative cases, which shows that the development of the entire industry still has a long way to go.”

The Proof-of-Reserves Conundrum

In the wake of the FTX collapse, the crypto industry’s latest obsession has been executing proof-of-reserve attestations. As such, Binance released a Merkle Tree-based system for Bitcoin and Ethereum. A similar approach was taken by other platforms such as OKX, Crypto.com, and ByBit amid growing calls from investors demanding transparency from centralized exchanges across the world.

Global audit firm Mazars certified that Binance held enough Bitcoins and Wrapped Bitcoins (WBTC) to cover all customer balances on the platform as of November 22nd. However, several industry experts pointed out that the report did not dwell much on the mentioned reserves but concentrated on informing the public about the backed assets.

CEO and co-founder of CoinLedger David Kemmerer told CryptoPotato,

“I agree with the executive that Binance has not come out clean on its PoR and is causing more harm than good. The statement of assets without liabilities is what is worrying about Binance’s proof of reserves. Furthermore, Binance cannot prove the released PoR without the intervention of a third party. The company should involve an independent auditor in doing so.”

The turmoil escalated after Mazars deleted the website that hosted proofs-of-reserves work for crypto exchanges. The move to suspend its work does not necessarily mean that the reports are incorrect. It could simply mean that the audit firm does not want the risk that comes with working on crypto exchanges’ reserves reports, especially after the high-profile collapse of FTX.

Nevertheless, an on-chain audit of Binance by the blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant concluded that the platform’s reserves of Bitcoin and other major coins “are not showing ‘FTX-like’ behavior at this point.” Upon further investigation, CryptoQuant revealed that it compared Binance’s Bitcoin liabilities, as stated in the proof-of-reserve report to how much BTC on-chain data shows that the exchange holds.

The post Binance Labs Amassed 2,100% Returns on Investment Since Inception appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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Filed under: Bitcoin - @ December 23, 2022 8:02 am