Crypto exchange Binance has seen Proof of Reserve audits removed from auditor site Mazars.
Mazars’ official website shows that it has completely discontinued Mazars Veritas, a division dedicated to auditing cryptocurrency exchanges. The tool was developed by Mazars in order to achieve “trust and transparency in the digital asset sector,” using the Silver Sixpence Merkle Tree Generating tool to complete Proof of Reserve reports.
On December 16, Bloomberg also reported that Mazars had stopped performing Proof of Reserve audits of cryptocurrency firms. Other audit firms such as FTX Armanino auditor have also reportedly stopped working with crypto exchanges such as OKX and Gate.io.
Mazars is widely known as the accounting firm for former US President Donald Trump. The auditing firm was appointed as the official auditor for Binance’s Proof of Reserve update in late November.
A number of competing cryptocurrency exchanges, including KuCoin and Crypto.com, have followed in Binance’s footsteps in teaming up with Mazars as part of their reserve reporting.
Binance CEO Zhao Zhao was quick to respond to the news on Twitter with a retweet from a random commenter. “Make a statement about why an audit firm decided to end business with encryption? Have them laugh out loud,” the tweet read.
CZ also later took to Twitter to hint that blockchains are transparent by default, stating:
“Blockchains are public and permanent records. It is the most auditable ledger.”
This news comes shortly after Mazars confirmed on December 7 that Binance has control of 575,742 Bitcoin.
BTC
pointers down
$17,017
Of her clients, she’s worth about $9.7 billion at the time of writing. The report has also since been removed from Mazars’ website.
Related: Members of the crypto community discuss running banks on Binance
Some financial professionals immediately noticed some red flags in the Binance reserve report. A former member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board argued that the report from Mazars lacks data on the quality of internal controls and how Binance systems liquidate assets to cover margin loans.
Mazars and Binance did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.
