Changpeng Zhao Responds to Forbes FUD Allegations

CEO Binance Changpeng Zhao (CZ) responded via a series of tweets to Forbes publication about “the movement of billions of the exchange’s collateral.”

I am reluctantly spending time on FUD again (4). Forbes wrote another FUD article with lots of accusatory questions, with negative spins, intentionally misconstruing facts. They referred to some old blockchain transactions that our clients have done. 1/9

— CZ ? Binance (@cz_binance) February 28, 2023

Zhao said that he was very reluctantly spending time on yet another FUD article with a large number of accusations, deliberately distorted facts and mentioning his ethnicity as a significant factor.

“It seems Forbes does not understand how exchanges work. Our users can withdraw their assets at any time they wish. And journalists turn these withdrawals into “getting hundreds of millions of moved collateral”. The article also ignores deposit transactions,” wrote Zhao, head of Binance.

According to him, despite Forbes’ attempt to lump Binance and FTX into one category, their business approaches are entirely different. Zhao reminded that Binance calmly weathered a daily outflow of stablecoins worth $3 billion in December 2022. The exchange also continues to safeguard customer security and privacy, for which it integrated zk-SNARK into the reserve verification mechanism.

Separately, Zhao emphasised that user funds on Binance are “always backed 1-to-1”.

“I am deeply disappointed that Forbes continues to publish unfounded articles, undermining its authority,” added Zhao.

As reported earlier, ChainArgos founder Jonathan Reiter concluded that Binance’s team had addressed deficiencies in managing BUSD reserves, which had sometimes led to a shortfall of more than $1 billion.

In the same month, Changpeng Zhao said that FTX paid an unnamed media outlet $43 million for a FUD campaign against Binance.