The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), went off on Forbes today following a recent article by the media company in which the largest exchange was accused of secretly moving customers' funds in the same manner as Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, FTX.

Forbes Accuses Binance of Moving $1.8 Billion of Customers Fund

Forbes report on Monday claimed that Binance quietly transferred $1.8 billion of collateral to back its customers' stablecoins in 2022. Forbes said it was done between August 17 and early December, without customer's knowledge. The article further cited blockchain data which showed that entities like Amber Group, Alameda Research, and Justin Sun’s Tron, have received hundreds of millions of the shifted collateral from Binance. In a Twitter thread on Tuesday, Binance's CEO disputed Forbes reports saying the intentionally misconstrued facts with “old blockchain transactions that our clients have done.”

Forbes Don’t Know How Exchanges Work, Says CZ

Zhao said the transactions, which Forbes referred to as “hundreds of millions of shifted collateral” to Tron, Amber group, and Alameda Research, were only user withdrawals. “They [Forbes] seem to not understand the basics of how an exchange works,” he tweeted. Binance’s CEO also said the Forbes article titled “Binance’s Asset Shuffling Eerily Similar To Maneuvers By FTX” tried hard to categorise Binance with FTX, which has been found to have commingled customer's funds. “We are different,” says CZ as he praised how Binance fulfilled billions in withdrawal requests last December. “We implemented proof-of-reserves using a new zero-knowledge (ZK) approach (suggested by Vitalik), protecting our users’ security and privacy,” CZ continued. “Binance holds user funds, 1:1, always.”

Forbes is Losing Credibility

The Forbes article probably marks the second-time Binance has spoken against the media company on a report. In November 2020, the largest crypto exchange sued Forbes over an article that claimed they had employed an elaborate scheme to evade regulation. However, Binance quietly dropped the lawsuit three months after. “I am deeply disappointed that Forbes continues to write baseless articles, losing their own credibility,” CZ concluded in his tweets.