On the 28th of February 2023, Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao posted a thread on Twitter indicating that his Chinese ethnicity does not matter in crypto.
And my Chinese ethnicity is brought up again, as if that mattered. 8/9
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) February 28, 2023
In his thread CZ rebuked Forbes, highlighting that his Chinese nationality was brought up in the article again. CZ had previously refuted claims that his exchange was a Chinese company reiterating severally that he is a Canadian citizen. He concluded his thread by stating how deeply disappointed he is that Forbes continues to write baseless articles, losing their credibility.
In a blog post published in September 2022, the exchange’s CEO explained that Binance was never incorporated in China and has no legal entities in China, and does not have plans to.
Additionally, the company does not operate like a Chinese company culturally and It would be impossible for Binance to be a Chinese company at present, as Binance and every other crypto exchange have been designated a criminal entity in China.
At the beginning of the thread, CZ described the Forbes article which compared his exchange and bankrupt FTX as another baseless FUD, intent on misconstruing facts.
In a report, Forbes claimed that Binance moved $1.8 billion in stablecoin collateral to numerous hedge funds. To which CZ countered that Forbes seems to not understand the basics of how an exchange works. Adding that Binance users are at liberty to withdraw their assets at any time they desire, and move it to wherever they desire.
He added that the Forbes report referred to withdrawals by Binance users as “millions of shifted collateral” claiming that they chose to conveniently ignore users’ deposit transactions In a desperate bid to try to categorize Binance and FTX together, which was also reflected in the choice of the article’s title.
In comparison with FTX, CZ stated that the two exchanges are different, as he pointed out that Binance has stood the test of time and it had processed billions in withdrawals every day in the week in December 2022. All of these didn’t bother him, as he was “socially hanging out with crypto friends” in Dubai. At the time, Binance recorded unprecedented outflows from its reserves, and at the peak of the FUD, it processed $6.6 billion in withdrawals over seven days.
In a bid to protect user security and privacy, Binance implemented the zero-knowledge approach coined by Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, for exchanges to show a proof-of-reserves.
While the Forbes article does not come as a shock, the CEO still considers it a disappointment.
