Binance Is Bleeding Assets, $12 Billion Gone In Less Than 60 Days
The outflow of cash from Binance is worse than the CEO Changpeng Zhao indicated last month, and it’s become considerably more severe since then, a Forbes analysis shows.
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is struggling to hold onto assets. In the wake of the collapse of rival FTX, investors have been pulling their crypto in recent weeks, and despite assurance from CEO Changpeng Zhao that the situation had stabilized, outflows are accelerating. Customers withdrew a net $360 million on Friday, according to data from crypto data firm Defillama.
On December 13, Nansen, a separate crypto data firm broke the news that Binance had lost $3 billion of assets over the previous week, representing 4% of the firm’s total at the time. A Forbes investigation revealed that, in fact, Binance lost 15% of its assets since a Twitter posting by Zhao (widely known as CZ) on the same day as he downplayed the Nansen report withdrawals. Still nearly a quarter of Binance assets left the exchange in less than two months. Forbes reached out to Binance seeking comments for this story but did not receive a response by publication time.
Investors’ lack of trust is best seen in the performances of Binance Coin (BNB) and Binance USD (BUSD), the two tokens bearing the exchange’s name. BNB lost 29% of its value in the past two months, and Forbes estimates that leaves about 29 million of the tokens at Binance, 51% less than disclosed by the exchange on November 10. Meanwhile the number of BUSD stablecoins at the firm sank by 40%.
There are also more subtle ways in which Binance seems to be losing trust and influence. While net assets dropped by 24% since November, the investors in well-known tokens like matic, ape, and gala pared their assets at the exchange by 40-50%.
Although it remains the largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, Binance is not unscathed by the nearly yearlong decline in digital assets. Its BNB token is down almost 37% from 12 months ago, according to Nomics, and the exchange’s decision to stop charging fees for spot bitcoin trading as the market faltered cost it about $3 billion a year in lost revenue, Forbes calculates. The overall value of cryptocurrencies has shown an even larger decline, dropping 56% over the past year, to $848.7 billion, CoinMarketCap data show.
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