The price of Bitcoin has fallen below $17,000 again after it was announced that accounting firm Mazars will suspend its work with Binance. The past few days already rumors and FUD about Binance intensified.
As NewsBTC reported, investors are concerned that Binance does not have enough reserves on hand for all of their client funds. Triggering the outcry was a proof of reservation conducted by Mazars that raised many new questions rather than answering the old ones.
Remarkably, the accounting firm not only worked with Binance, but also other cryptocurrency exchanges such as Crypto.com and KuCoin to testify to proof-of-reserves.
One email to Binance is now indicating that Mazars is pausing all work for crypto clients. “Unfortunately, this means we are unable to work with Mazars for now,” said a Binance spokesperson.
Binance Rumors Drag Market Sentiment Down
The crypto market is not calming down after the collapse of FTX. Rumors of insufficient customer fund support from Binance, Tether (USDT) and the Digital Currency Group’s troubles due to Genesis Trading’s liquidity problems hang like a sword of Damocles over the crypto market.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao had tried several times in recent days to dampen the turmoil. For example, he answered questions from the community in an AMA and appeared in an interview on CNBC.
When asked if Binance could pay out $2.1 billion if that amount was due. CZ said: “We are financially sound. We are financially strong.” Binance’s CEO was also asked why the company has not yet disclosed its liabilities and whether the exchange plans to do so. cz said:
Together with the audit firms, we examine the financial obligations. [..] Audits do not reveal any problem.
CNBC anchors interrupted CZ, claiming that an audit by one of the Big Four could stop all rumours. “If you say that some of them don’t want to work with you, it raises questions! They don’t want to work with you because you don’t have the documentation and data that would make them feel comfortable,” they said.
CZ in turn refuted this statement claiming that “Actually, many of them don’t know how to audit crypto exchanges.”
Binance CEO CZ on CNBC:
Many big four companies do not know how to monitor crypto exchanges. pic.twitter.com/r3C15cMwbK
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) December 15, 2022
Bitcoin price dips below $17,000
The interview did not contribute in any way to calming the crypto market, especially since CZ was also unable to provide a satisfactory answer via Twitter in the aftermath. CZ only retweeted the following and mention in his latest tweet that “Blockchains are public, permanent records. It is the most verifiable ledger.”
The pause of the collaboration with Mazars also puts the interview in a bad light. Mazars has not yet communicated why it has suspended cooperation with Binance and the other crypto exchanges, other than that the term “audit” is being used incorrectly.
Bitcoin investors took the interview overwhelmingly bearish. In the past six hours, Bitcoin’s price is down about $500 and stood at $17,004 at the time of writing.