​OKX, Huobi, KuCoin, and Gate support Binance’s proof-of-reserves initiative

What’s new? On November 8, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said that all cryptocurrency exchanges should publish regular reports on their reserves. According to him, Binance will start doing so in the near future. The proposal was supported by trading platforms such as OKX, KuCoin, Gate, and Huobi.

All crypto exchanges should do merkle-tree proof-of-reserves. Banks run on fractional reserves. Crypto exchanges should not.@Binance will start to do proof-of-reserves soon. Full transparency. — CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) November 8, 2022

What did the companies say? Representatives of the OKX crypto exchange announced on Twitter that they will start publishing proof-of-reserves reports in the next 30 days. The company noted that this is an important step to establishing trust in the industry.

It's critical for all major crypto venues to publicly share their auditable merkle tree proof-of-reserves or POF. We plan to publish ours in the coming weeks (within 30 days). This is an important step to establish a baseline trust in the industry. More to come... — OKX (@okx) November 8, 2022

KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu noted that protecting customer funds is the company’s top priority, and it will also provide a report on the status of reserves after a month. The platform will engage several authoritative auditing firms to compile it.

1/ Protecting user funds is the top priority at KuCoin. We will release Merkle tree proof-of-reserves or POF in about one month. — Johnny_KuCoin (@lyu_johnny) November 9, 2022

The Gate exchange published an announcement on its blog that its reserves in BTC and ETH exceeded the total amount of user assets. According to the audit conducted by the firm Armanino, the platform has 108% of total user BTC assets and 104% of customers’ ETH assets in reserves.

Gate’s blog post

On the part of the Huobi crypto exchange and TRON blockchain founder Justin Sun, who sits on its global advisory board, a statement was made about its willingness to provide a 1:1 exchange of TRX, BTT, JST, SUN, and HT tokens for affected FTX users if the platform is unable to do so itself. Sun also praised Zhao’s initiative to increase industry transparency, adding that Huobi already provides proof-of-reserves reports and plans to do so in the future.

🔥#Huobi and @trondao to exchange the Tron tokens (#TRX , #BTT , #JST , #SUN, $HT) at 1:1 even if they cannot be withdrawn on FTX.💪➡️https://t.co/v9xSdwipAa pic.twitter.com/UlMjtXvEBH — Huobi (@HuobiGlobal) November 9, 2022

Zhao suggested that exchanges publish proof-of-reserves after the 71% collapse of FTX’s token. On November 8, he announced that he had entered into a strategic deal with FTX, which involves a full acquisition of the crypto exchange. The deal is designed to address the lack of liquidity and the withdrawal of users’ funds from FTX.