Binance Reserves Show Almost Half of Holdings Are in Its Own Tokens

(Bloomberg) -- Binance Holdings’ major crypto token holdings include $74.7 billion worth of coins, of which around 40% are in its branded stablecoin and native coin, according to data compiled by Nansen based on information from the world’s largest digital-asset exchange.

Of the $74.6 billion termed as net worth, about $23 billion was in the BUSD stablecoin, issued by Paxos, and $6.4 billion in its Binance Coin, according to Nansen. The exchange also has 10.5% of its major token holdings in Bitcoin and 9.8% in Ether, Nansen data shows. In a Nov. 10 blog post, Binance said its disclosure of holdings was a “snapshot” of major token holdings and “starting point,” and that more data will be shared later in a “full audited report.” While Binance shared details of its reserves, the dashboard does not break down how much of the assets are its own holdings, versus those of its customers. 

“These are users assets, in the form users choose to store with us,” Binance co-founder  Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, said in a tweet Friday. “We don’t convert for them.”

The world’s largest exchange released the information after Zhao announced earlier this week that Binance would provide proof-of-reserves to be more transparent. The demise of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX.com has raised concerns over the opacity of exchange balance sheets and is prompting companies to increase disclosures. Crypto.com has also publicly shared its reserves pool on Friday.

Binance is the first unlisted crypto exchange to come out with the details since FTX collapsed, the latest in a series of crypto businesses to go bust this year. Crypto exchanges including OKX, KuCoin, Poloniex, and Huobi this week vowed to increase transparency and provide greater clarity on their holdings. 

The swift collapse of FTX.com and the rest of SBF’s empire was partly triggered by revelations of potential over-exposure to the exchange’s native token FTT. As FTT prices crashed, so did FTX.com, pushing it to the brink of bankruptcy.

“The net worth number on the site indicates the value of the token holdings in the addresses we’ve added based on the document from Binance,” a spokesperson at Nansen said, adding that those are addresses from the chains the blockchain analytics firm supports. 

(Corrects first and second paragraphs to reflect that holdings are only a partial list, and clarifies that BUSD is issued by Paxos.)

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