Financial markets are extremely complex, and even for experienced investors and traders, it is an extremely difficult task to independently make reliable judgments about the situation of a particular asset class, token or platform. At this time, we often need to rely on the insights of professional market analysis institutions - of course, these researchers must use appropriate data and analytical tools, and remain fair in writing their statements and conclusions.
According to several research reports released in the last few days of 2022 and early 2023, Binance's overall market position is quite strong - this is a misleading praise, and Binance deserves it. But our own evaluation is not important, you should listen more to the opinions of professional research institutions, Wall Street giants, and community-based on-chain analysis platforms.
Bernstein Research
Bernstein Research is a sell-side research and brokerage firm under AllianceBernstein Holding L.P., a global asset management company, and is recognized as a top financial advisor on Wall Street.
In its Global Digital Asset Outlook 2023, Bernstein’s analysts specifically discuss Binance’s position in the “Financial Infrastructure” section amid the frenzy that has swept the global crypto market in 2022. The analysts’ views are reflected in the title of the subsection – “Binance will not fall!” The report also elaborates on Bernstein’s assessment of the Binance ecosystem as “solvent, liquid and stable” and “always responsible to customers.” The lead author of the report further emphasized the measures taken by Binance to make the assets held verifiable by disclosing cold wallet addresses and continuously investing in its custody and security infrastructure. Analysts believe that Binance’s financial soundness is also indirectly proven by the fact that it withstood up to $6 billion in user withdrawals on December 13, 2022.
CryptoQuant
CryptoQuant, a blockchain analytics platform that provides crypto traders and investors with data-based insights to help them improve their investment strategies, released its analysis of Binance’s Bitcoin Reserve Proof Report in mid-December.
In the research report, CryptoQuant analysts compared Binance's disclosed liabilities with their proprietary metrics for estimating Binance customer deposits and found that the two values matched up to 99%. In addition, they estimated on-chain data for Binance's Ether and stablecoin reserves, concluding that the structure of these assets is robust and there is no sign of potential behavior that could lead to the same path as FTX. They rated the overall structure of Binance's reserves as "clean," meaning that Binance Coin, the token of the BNB Chain ecosystem, accounts for a small portion of the holdings.
Arcane Research
Arcane Research, a Norway-based digital asset native research company, called 2022 a "year of hard lessons" in its annual review report. Analysts acknowledged that the crypto market has suffered a heavy blow in the past 12 months, but they also listed the winners who "landed safely" this year, and Binance is one of them.
Experts at Arcane Research even bluntly stated that "in terms of trading activity, Binance basically represents the entire crypto market", and believed that our strong market position stems from policies such as exemption of transaction fees for Bitcoin spot trading pairs. However, they also admitted that some of the growth was endogenous, that is, the growth mainly came from demand or users. The report pointed out the strength of BUSD in the stablecoin market and Binance's "unusual" status in employment policy: while many competitors are laying off employees, Binance is still continuing to recruit (as of now, Binance has about 7,500 employees), which is also Binance's more eye-catching achievement in 2022.
Interestingly, in Arcane’s prediction for 2023, other exchanges will step up in the spot market. No matter what happens in 2023, our focus will always be on providing a first-class user experience. We sincerely hope that we can usher in a year of competition as the industry promotes digital assets and Web3 to become the global mainstream.