While the veracity of these lists of reserve proofs and asset dashboards is debatable, they do provide a glimpse into the large amounts of crypto-currencies held by the major exchanges. For example, Binance, the largest crypto-currency exchange by trading volume, manages $66 billion in crypto assets, or more than 6% of the net worth of the entire $1 trillion crypto-currency economy.
An inspection of 5 reserve evidence lists that provide insight into large crypto-currency holdings.
It’s been more than 80 days since Coindesk published a list of crypto-currency reserves on Alameda Research’s balance sheet, which showed that the quantitative trading desk owned a large amount of ftx token (FTT). Then, on November 6, 2022, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) revealed that his exchange would be selling its FTT holdings. Since then, FTT has lost considerable value and FTX filed for bankruptcy protection five days later on November 11. At the time, and prior to FTX’s bankruptcy, it was difficult to monitor the stock market’s reserves because executives kept things very opaque. This led to exchanges releasing proof-of-reserve lists, and members of the crypto-currency industry were critical of the specific types of lists and how they were verified.
In addition, Paul Munter, the acting chief accountant of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), recently stated that the SEC is closely monitoring proof of reserves (POR). Despite the complaints, the available proof-of-reserve lists provide insight into what entities are holding and, to some extent, help improve market stability because people can monitor holdings. Here’s a look at five different centralized crypto asset exchanges and their holdings of cryptoassets as of January 22, 2023, according to the Reserve Evidence List. Nansen offers a dashboard for 18 different centralized crypto exchange platforms.
Binance
Binance is the largest with $66 billion in digital assets held in reserve by the crypto exchange giant. As of Jan. 22, the largest crypto-currency exchange by trading volume held 486,427 bitcoins, worth $11.1 billion. In terms of stable currencies, Binance holds $13.2 billion in tether and $13.3 billion for BUSD.
In addition, Binance holds 4.7 million ether, worth $7.6 billion, and $7.6 billion in binance coins. The exchange also holds more than $13 billion in other crypto assets too numerous to mention. If Binance Reserve were included in the top 10 cryptoassets by market capitalization, it would rank fourth.
Okx
Nansen’s dashboard listing shows that the Okx crypto-currency exchange holds $7.6 billion in crypto assets. $3 billion of those funds are held in tether (USDT), and the exchange also holds 97,656 BTC worth $2.2 billion.
25.95% of Okx’s assets are held in ethereum (ETH), representing a balance of 1.2 million ETH, worth $1.9 billion, using current ETH exchange rates. In addition, Okx also holds approximately 294 million US dollar coins (USDC).
Crypto.com
Crypto.com has about $3.83 billion under management on Jan. 22, and its holdings currently include 44,208 shares of the company’s stock worth just over $1 billion. The exchange also holds 514,763 ETH for about $833 million.
Nansen’s Crypto.com dashboard further shows that the exchange platform holds 17.28% of its holdings in shiba inu (SHIB). Crypto.com’s SHIB holdings include approximately 55.2 trillion SHIB, or $663 million worth of meme tokens. The exchange platform also manages about 585 million U.S. dollar coins (USDC) and 2.1 billion cronos (CRO), worth about $167 million.
Bitfinex
Digital currency trading platform Bitfinex holds $8 billion in crypto assets on Sunday, January 22, 2023. 54.29% of Bitfinex’s assets are in bitcoin, or about 191,654 BTC for $4.36 billion today. 28.15% of Bitfinex’s assets are held in leo unus sed (LEO) tokens, or about $2.2 billion in LEO.
The exchange also holds 466,014 ethereum tokens, worth $756 million, on January 22. In addition, Bitfinex manages 331 million tether (USDT) and 0.64 percent of Bitfinex’s assets, or about 126 million. XRP are held in reserve.
Huobi
Huobi holds about $3.17 billion on January 22, and 30.91% of assets are in the exchange coin, huobi token (HT). The exchange manages 196 million HT, which is now worth about $980 million in USD value.
Huobi also holds 617 million tether (USDT) and 9 million tron (TRX), worth $596 million. 12.13% of Huobi’s assets are held in BTC, 5.35% is stored in ETH and 13.35% of Huobi’s assets are alternative crypto assets too numerous to name. The $7.7 million in value comes from the 57.58 million HUSD that Huobi holds, or 30.66% of the HUSD supply. While HUSD was once a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, HUSD now trades at $0.13 per coin.
The 5 exchanges hold $88.6 billion, or 8.6% of the current value of the crypto economy
The five crypto-currency exchanges mentioned above hold $88.6 billion in combined crypto assets. The combined value of the reserves of the five exchanges is equivalent to 8.6% of the current $1 trillion crypto economy.
74.49% of the $88.6 billion is held on Binance, and the rest is scattered among Okx, Crypto.com, Bitfinex and Huobi. The exchange platform that holds the largest amount of exchange tokens is Bitfinex, with its $2.2 billion LEO pool. Of the five exchanges mentioned, Binance holds the most bitcoins with its cache of 486,427 BTC