The website of auditor Mazars has taken down the proof-of-reserve audits for cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
According to the company's official website, Mazars Veritas, a division devoted to auditing cryptocurrency exchanges, has been completely stopped. The tool was created by Mazars utilizing the Silver Sixpence Merkle Tree Generating tool to supplement proof-of-reserve reports in order to "bring trust and transparency to the digital asset market."
Additionally, Mazars ceased performing audits of proof-of-reserve for bitcoin companies, according to Bloomberg on December 16. Other auditing companies have apparently quit working with cryptocurrency exchanges including OKX and Gate.io, including FTX's auditor Armanino.
The accounting firm of former US President Donald Trump's business is known as Mazars. In late November, the auditing company was chosen to serve as the official auditor for Binance's proof-of-reserve upgrades.
KuCoin and Crypto.com, two competing cryptocurrency exchanges, have followed Binance's example and partnered with Mazars as part of their reserve reports.
Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, CEO of Binance, responded to the news on Twitter right away with a retweet from an arbitrary commenter.
Making a statement on why an auditing company decided to quit working with crypto? Ask them lol
— - (@sebxbt) December 16, 2022
Later, CZ hinted that blockchains are transparent by default on Twitter, writing:
Blockchains are public, permanent records. It's the most auditable ledger.
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) December 16, 2022
The announcement follows Mazars' confirmation on December 7 that Binance controlled 575,742 Bitcoin, valued at about $9.7 billion at the time of writing, belonging to its users. Since then, the report has also been taken down from Mazars' website.
Certain financial experts noticed some warning signs in Binance's reserve report right away. An ex-member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board claimed that the Mazars study, which was just made public, lacks information on the effectiveness of internal controls and how Binance's systems dispose of assets to pay off margin loans.
