Reuters Accuses Binance of Mixing Customers Assets with Revenues

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, lashed out at Reuters for publishing an article alleging that Binance mixed billions of dollars of customer assets with its corporate revenue in 2020 and 2021, according to Crypto Potato.

Reuters said in its article that it had cited multiple anonymous sources familiar with the matter, one of whom had “direct knowledge of Binance’s group finances, noting that Binance’s move came to hide the customers’ whereabouts of their money.

The Reuters report claimed that Binance did the mixing process almost daily in accounts Binance held with the US bankrupt bank Silvergate, which is under investigation now for helping the collapsed FTX exchange comingle funds with Alameda Research.

For his part, Binance’s Chief Communications Officer Patrick Hillmann described the Reuters report as weak and racist, however, he admitted that the crypto exchange experienced regulatory shortcomings over the past period.

Hillmann pointed out that Binance’s customers are being frankly told that their deposits are being used to purchase BUSD – stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar, underlining that Reuters has no evidence that Binance clients have lost their money, which he considered a transparent attempt to protect themselves from a libel suit.

“We’ve been very public about where the company had regulatory shortcomings in the past, there’s no reason for a respected news outlet like Reuters, to continue making stuff up,” he said.

He denied that the funds within its Silvergate accounts were customer deposits, but the funds were used to buy BUSD.

He also accused the US media outlet of being xenophobic for mentioning CEO Changpeng Zhao’s Chinese ethnicity, a matter which was clarified by its executive that Binance is not a Chinese company and Zhao is a Canadian citizen since he was 12.