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Benzinga
Benzinga
Business
Murtuza Merchant

CZ Slams Reports Binance's Reserves Are Full Of Its Own Tokens: 'Numbers Are All Wrong'

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao on Friday came down heavily on a report the cryptocurrency exchange holds $74.6 billion in tokens, out of which nearly 40% are its own stablecoin BUSD (CRYPTO: BUSD) and native coin BNB (CRYPTO: BNB).

Sharing data provided by blockchain analytics firm provided by Nansen, the Bloomberg report said about $23 billion of the $74.6 billion net worth is in the company's own stablecoin BUSD and $6.4 billion was in its own cryptocurrency, BNB.

According to Nansen data, the exchange has also allocated 10.5% of its holdings to Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and 9.8% to Ether (CRYPTO: ETH).

Also read: FTX, FTX US, Alameda Research File For Bankruptcy: Cryptocurrencies Plummet​​​​​​​

CZ Says BUSD Issued By Paxos

Challenging the report, Zhao, popularly known as “CZ” in the crypto industry, said: “#BUSD is issued by Paxos, an NYDFS regulated entity, not Binance. The numbers are all wrong too. These are users' assets, in the form users choose to store with us. We don't convert for them.”

According to data shared by Binance, it holds around 475,000 Bitcoin ($7.8 billion), 4.8 million Ether ($5.57 billion), 17.6 billion USDT (CRYPTO: USDT) ($17.4 million), 601 million USDC (CRYPTO: USDC) ($607 million), as well as close to 21.7 billion of its own stablecoin BUSD (worth $21.9 billion) and 58 million of its BNB tokens (worth $16 billion).

The current value of these tokens is about $72.3 billion, according to Nansen.

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the rest of Sam Bankman-Fried’s empire went down like a pack of cards, in part due to disclosure about possible overexposure to the exchange's native FTX Token (CRYPTO: FTT). 

The fall in FTT price from $22 levels to nearly zero brought down FTX founder Bankman-Fried’s empire.

Once a billionaire, his net worth is now reportedly zero. 

FTX, Affiliated Companies File For Bankruptcy

Earlier on Friday, FTX, FTX US, Alameda Research and approximately 130 additional affiliated companies on Friday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a United States court.

The development comes as industry participants watched for Tron founder Justin Sun to potentially bail out the ailing exchange. 

Hours earlier, Sun said he has entered into negotiations with FTX after Zhao walked away from the deal to acquire the Bahamas-based FTX exchange.

FTX’s bankruptcy filing sent the already ailing cryptocurrency market deep in the red with major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polygon (CRYPTO: MATIC), and Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) trading down 5%, 4.5%, 8%, and 8%, respectively.

Next: Bitcoin Trading Volume Surges: Retail Traders Pick A Side

Photo via Shutterstock. 

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