Binance customers have pulled a staggering $12 billion from the crypto exchange in just 2 months, report says

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Binance customers have pulled a staggering $12 billion from the crypto exchange in just 2 months, report says
Customers have pulled $12 billion from Binance over just two months, according to a Forbes report published Monday.Photo by Pedro Fiúza/NurPhoto via Getty Images
  • Outflows from Binance are accelerating rather than stabilizing, according to a Forbes report published Monday.
  • Customers reportedly pulled $12 billion from the crypto exchange over a two-month period.
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Binance lost an eye-popping $12 billion worth of assets in just two months as customers pulled their funds from the exchange amid a deepening confidence crisis in the crypto market, Forbes reported Monday.

The withdrawals cited by the publication took place between November 4 and January 4 – meaning that they happened during a period covering the collapse of rival exchange FTX and the arrest and extradition of its now-disgraced CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

The $12 billion loss means that Binance has seen between 18% and 31% of the assets it held on November 4 erased, according to data from research firms Defillama and Glassnode.

There's no suggestion that Binance experienced any issues processing withdrawal requests in the 61-day period – and CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao has previously said that billion-dollar losses are merely "business as usual" for the exchange.

"We saw some withdrawals today (net $1.14 billion-ish)," CZ tweeted on December 13, responding to a report by crypto data firm Nansen that said customers had pulled $3 billion from Binance the previous week. "We have seen this before. Some days we have net withdrawals; some days we have net deposits. Business as usual for us."

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"I actually think it is a good idea to 'stress test withdrawals' on each CEX on a rotating basis," he added, with the term CEX referring to centralized crypto exchanges.

But the price of Binance's native BNB token – generally seen as a sign of investors' faith in the exchange – has slumped 17% to just over $240 since November 4, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Binance published a proof of reserves report that showed it was 97% collateralized on December 7 in a bid to shore up investor confidence – but its auditor Mazars called off the analysis it had been performing for the exchange just two weeks later.

The Securities and Exchange Commission also filed an objection to Binance's proposed $1.02 billion takeover of crypto brokerage Voyager Digital last week, questioning whether CZ's exchange would be able to close such a large transaction.

The spectacular implosion of rival exchange FTX in November has rocked crypto markets – and as the largest exchange, Binance has suffered the brunt of customer outflows.

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Binance itself contributed to FTX's downfall when it announced it would dump all of its holdings of the native FTT token on November 7.

That triggered a solvency crisis at FTX, before the exchange filed for bankruptcy on November 11. CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas last month and extradited to the US to face eight criminal counts including fraud, money laundering, and violating campaign finance laws.

"The Forbes analysis is poorly conceived and the numbers at which they arrive are off by billions," a Binance spokesperson told Insider.

"We continue to hold assets 1:1 and can fund withdrawals at any time, even at the large, albeit overstated, numbers in the article," they added.

Read more: Coinbase will chop 20% of its staff in a 2nd round of big job cuts, as its boss blames 'unscrupulous actors' for putting pressure on crypto

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