​Binance CEO calls the outflow of $1 billion from the platform for a day a “stress test”

What’s new? Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has commented on the massive outflow of funds from the platform. According to him, on December 13, the exchange’s users withdrew $1,14 billion in assets. Zhao called it “business as usual,” noting that the company can record both net inflows and net outflows on different days. In addition, he called it a good idea to “stress test withdrawals” on all centralized exchanges (CEX) one by one.

We saw some withdrawals today (net $1.14b ish). We have seen this before. Some days we have net withdrawals; some days we have net deposits. Business as usual for us.I actually think it is a good idea to “stress test withdrawals” on each CEX on a rotating basis. 💪1/2 https://t.co/uF9lLPDSyS — CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) December 13, 2022

Details on the situation. Wall Street Journal reporters reported that the outflow of funds from Binance amounted to $1,6 billion in 24 hours. On the morning of December 13, the exchange suspended the withdrawal of USDC stablecoins due to increased demand. Later, Tether announced that it would convert 3 billion of its USDT stablecoins from the TRON blockchain to the Ethereum network at Binance’s request. The company explained that exchanges can make such requests to them when there is a shortage of an asset on one of the blockchains on which the asset operates and a surplus on another.

Zhao also reposted a tweet by a user under the nickname CL207, who stated that Binance is “more professional than” FTX because it has over $60 billion stored in its cold wallets. In this, the user referred to data from the analytics platform Nansen.

wait binance have 60 billion in cold wallets? dis seems like 420 magnitudes more professional than ftx scrambling in absolute shit defi farms just to meet last few redemptions before they 0'd and ftx barely had a cold wallet so why are ppl scared https://t.co/jnQBNkWnVd pic.twitter.com/o2o4OVDtk4 — CL (@CL207) December 13, 2022

Also, The Block’s Vice President of Research, Larry Cermak, posted a list of Binance wallets on Twitter.

Most of these are public but in case anyone finds all wallets I have tagged as Binance, here it is. pic.twitter.com/mH2zf5TiS3 — Larry Cermak 🫡 (@lawmaster) December 13, 2022

Zhao previously accused the media of spreading misleading information (FUD) about the exchange. For example, Reuters journalists reported that the US Attorney’s Office may charge Binance and its senior executives with money laundering and sanctions violations. Representatives of Binance denied the information in the Reuters article, saying that the agency’s journalists were “attacking our incredible law enforcement team” of the exchange.