Looks like we're starting. Yeah, how's it going? Not too bad, sorry I Just rushed back. Yeah, no problem. but we've got a bunch of people here so we can get started. Um, yeah. so we're just going to go through a few frequently, collect, ask questions before we get into the stage once. So uh, first things first: I know that you have been releasing uh, bits and pieces of information about, um, proof of funds and liabilities. So if you could just go into a bit more detail around this, like when when would we expect a full audit of the reserve to be released? What would it include? who might be ordered to be and so on? Sure. Uh, yeah. So proof of reserves is a mathematical way to prove, uh, that your balance is included in a tree of balances and then um, it's using a Marco tree. There we go. Algorithm: Um I Actually did this in Um together with steam. Uh, sorry, together with James Thomas Um, uh in 2014. So the Mercury is not a new thing. it's been around for years. Um, so it basically ensures that you it basically let users ensure themselves that their funds are including a grand total and we make sure that the total is there. So um, and uh, originally we typically need a third party auditor to be involved. Unfortunately, uh, number one, the third party auditor was kind of busy because everyone's trying to do proof of reserves, and secondly, the third party auditor is one order to the FTX used. but um, there's a bit of scrutiny there. Um, actually this afternoon I was actually talking with Vitalik Vitalik want to come up with some type of new uh proof of reserves protocol and I of course offered to use Binance as the guinea pig or the test. Uh, the first test test case and he's quite. uh, he. He's quite excited about it. so we're connecting our teams to to do that. So roughly we'll expect probably a couple weeks. So this is a reason why we published all of our code wallet addresses so that people can see our code of wallet addresses directly. It's not as good as the Merkel tree, but yeah, at least she was like, look, this is how much funds we have and you should roughly correspond to when we do the Mercury proof of reserves and it's good that other changes the following and um, but yeah, I Think anything we can do to increase increase transparency is good. so that's kind of the rough timeline we're looking at a couple weeks short answer, but that's a long, longer, longer version. Yeah, great. And then just to take that, then to the next level um Finance Specifically, in the low period before that full transparency is released. How safe is finance right now? How can the users maintain their trust And does Finance have any current liabilities? So Binance we have ran. We ran a very simple business. We have not taken loans from other people. Uh, we are not taking VC Investments Uh, we especially have not taken VC Investments and then give the money back to the VC through a loan or or a swapping or a reversing investment. Um, and we just have. We just have never done that. We don't have loans, We don't have debt, We don't owe anybody any money. Um, so no one. Uh, yeah. So I Believe in the industry, we don't owe anybody any money. No one gave us loans. Uh, we do not. We also did not give loans out of the platform so we never take user assets and give it to a third party to manage and try to make yields. Etc Uh, We do do a couple of things. We have a margin program where users savings products um are used to provide um uh, lending for the margin Traders But the margin Traders cannot withdraw that money away and our system does all the risk management. If the margin Traders are out of margin, we liquidate and we do the we do the risk management so the funds never leave our platform. We do do a bit of a D5 staking, but we only interact with a smart contract protocol and we do that in a fairly limited basis so we don't have funds that we give to another third-party fund manager and we we rely on them to perform well and not run away. Um, and we. Oh, Lastly, many small exchanges rely on either each other or Binance for liquidity. So that means they have to make a deposit on Binance and then um, uh, so they are in their account. Uh, they would typically have millions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars. Uh, on Binance or in another exchange. Um, to to sort of share liquidity? Finance Because we're the largest liquidity pool on the planet, we don't use other smaller exchanges for liquidity, so all of the user funds all of our funds stay on our platform. Uh, we don't. We don't use other platforms for um, uh, to borrow the liquidity. So from all of those aspects, um, our funds stay on our platform and we publish the address. It's transparent. Um, so yeah, nothing's risk-free right? So um, A equipment changes are inherently quite risky businesses. Um, you have to run them well. You have to do security well. Um, you have to do a You have to do a number of things well. But we're we're we're we're We're self-constrained contained. we don't owe any other people, uh, other money. So that's we're very clean, very simple business. We also do not do Futures Trading ourselves. We don't have a Quantum trading firm. Um, so we are not trying to make money from Trading uh from Trading ourselves. Uh, we're not trying to be a con Quant shop or like a hedge fund shop we make money for through trading fees. Uh. Lastly, we do have market makers. We rely very heavily on third-party market makers that provides liquidity. Um, there is one market maker which I'm a investor and shareholder of and I make sure that that liquidity provider does not make profits. so we try to make it not lose money. so they just provide liquidity in the market. Um, they're not profit driven. So um, yeah, the we're we. We run a very simple exchange business. Yeah, okay, great. And then just one final question along these lines. So as you know, we released um, a links to a bunch of our internal wallets in for some increased transparency this week head of proof of reserves and there was a report from a blockchain analytics firm that dug into the details a little bit there and we had a question around. um, some of the percentages of the Holdings that were shown in those wallets. So what's your take on? Is it too risky for Binance to be holding a big percentage of Busd and BNB in its Reserves Uh, so um, no. The short answer is no Busd is the most. Uh, Fiat-backed stable coin it's audited by Nydfs. Um, well, it's not issued by Binance. it's issued by Paxos. Um, two very separate companies, two very separate management teams. They started way before Binance. Uh, Paxos used to be it bit. um I think the Paxos founder Rich Theo um was on a separate Twitter space AMA yesterday um which I joined briefly. um I was actually uh, we're actually both in Indonesia for this conference Um and the PUSD is the most Fiat backed stable coin and that's fully audited. Um and um, that's transparent. They publish their monthly Holdings report. Um. and whereas other stable coins um, use a lot more corporate corporate bonds uh, corporate. um uh uh uh. what do you call a corporate bonds corporate treasury bills. And then there are other stable coins which which are um, uh, kind of a black box. uh to the to the outside. um, they don't provide audit reports Etc Um. And then there are there are other algo stable coins. Uh, busd is the simplest stable coin. It's Fiat-backed It's very transparent. Um, it's not a large portion on our exchange if you look at total total asset value, uh B and B is even smaller percentage on exchange today in a bear. Market If their assets do not include a large percentage of stable coins, that is a risky sign. Um, because if we're in Bear Market a lot of people have converted from Bitcoin Ethereum BNB into stable coins on a crypto exchange when they release their reserves. if it doesn't contain a large stash of a large, a decent percentage of stable coins. Um, that's usually a something missing. Um, that's that's actually usually a warning sign. Not to say it's guaranteed a problem. Maybe they haven't released it yet, but um, that's something that people should look into. So um, we I believe that our our proportions are actually very, very healthy. Okay, perfect. And then just two quick, slightly more positive questions before we open the floor to the rest of the community here. So CZ Today, you put out an announcement about Industry Recovery from So perhaps you could expand on that a little bit and maybe give some insight into how that could help projects Thrive or what criteria we might be using to to help assess that? Sure. So I Think well. given the events that transpired in the last week or so, there's quite a Um. there will be quite a number of good projects. Um, they not. They basically didn't really didn't do much wrong. They were building their product. They may have their funds on a exchange that went down, or they may be, um, they may be invested Etc Um, for a very for various number of reasons. They may be negatively affected. Um, but otherwise, other than the sort of a liquidity like short of money in the short term, there are good projects. good products. Uh good. Community Etc A good team? Um, we want to help those projects to, uh, survive, Um, this, uh, uh, this turmoil. So, uh, the best way to provide to help them is to help them through this liquidity crisis basically giving them money. or Investments Etc We actually think that this is a pretty good time to do it, because you know most of this Project's valuations are much more reasonable than they were a year ago. Um, so um so yeah we um, this is this is not to be very honest. this actually this idea didn't come from me, it come from one of our co-founders um and we said let's embrace it and we still figure out figuring out the details. but we want to look at more projects we want to. especially projects that uh, um, in need of help. Um. and also after I put out that announce that tweet, um, four or five other funds actually reached out to us and they also want to help. Uh, a few projects reach out to us as well so we'll be going through that. Um and um. so I think basically now Um, there are a few players in the in the industry who still have a very healthy cash. Reserve Binance is one of them and we want to help the project. The strong projects, The good projects that need cash to survive to survive this. Crunch And then the guys who's the project that survived this difficult time is actually going to be much stronger later on. So um so I think you know as I think as negatively as things look right now, we actually think this is a very good cleansing period and the week project has gone. Um, the industry is actually much healthier. Uh, even though it's extremely painful during this period But we we want to invest in strong projects right now. Okay, that's clear. Thanks, Easy. Um, okay, so just one question left before I do that. I'm going to start bringing people onto the stage, so just a reminder, please try and keep your questions as quick as possible. just remain muted until I call on you. And then yeah, you can ask your question from that. So excuse the final question from me. Um, what's your suggestion to the average crypto user? what? how should they act? How should they think in a market like this at the moment? Um, so I've got to be very careful here. Um, giving um, what you do because everyone, um, everyone's situation is a little bit different. Um, but basically, um, you should not invest in crypto if you're using money that you need for next week or next month. You should only be using discretionary cash that you don't need for a long time, like maybe a couple years. And if you, if you, if you're doing that, um, if you don't know what's going on, just hold um, a couple years later All of This Will Blow Away Um, people may or may not even remember this. Um, and um, if you, yeah, that would be the overall overriding sort of General Simple principle: If you don't, why is he cutting in and out what's going on? don't try to uh, guess what's gonna happen uh Sell Here By there right now, during the next little while it's gonna be highly volatile. a lot of different news may come out. Some of them will be very positive, some of them will be very negative. Um, it's very hard to predict. so we'll we will go through a period of high volatility and high unpredictable, unpredictable unpredictableness. So um, uh yeah. So unless you unless you're very experienced, very mature. um very confident and and can handle the risk. Um I would recommend. Most people just hold Um for this period of time. Um, yeah, that's pretty much it. Really Yeah, Okay, great. So on to the community questions Then So first up we have: Anthony You had mentioned that um, a Binance doesn't have any debts or any loans that have been made. but I'm just curious on this contagion effect that we're expecting. Um, is this going to be affecting any subsidiaries or any of the major Investments That Finance has made in the most recent time? Um, I'm actually not too. Well, that's a broader question. Um I'm actually not too sure. Um, we haven't heard from from our portfolio companies. so far we have not heard like big cries for help. Um I Think the Binance ecosystem is much less a BNB ecosystem is much less impacted. Um, they're all much more closely uh, aligned with, you know, the bias ecosystem. Um so I haven't heard of anything, but we do. We have invested in like 150 something portfolio companies. um I don't know the state of all of them. Uh, we? yeah. so um I do know there will be some uh, cascading contagion effects. Um, there will be a few other players uh who either have money on FTX um and a significant amount significant enough amount that you may eat a custom cause some trouble. Um, but um, in this type of situations, the first one to go down is usually the big one. Um, the cascading effects become smaller and smaller. So if we look at like you know, Luna UST that was like 40 billion, 50 billion dollars of value that's been destroyed. The cascading the first order of cascading ones three arrows. It's like a six, four, four, five billion dollar uh size fund. And then the third. um, the third layers are the Celsius Voyagers. They're like, you know, half a billion to one billion one billion dollar kind of so one billion dollar kind of range. So each time it Cascades um it's more spread out and smaller. So um, and we also seen from the price that you know when three arrows happened it was a big uh, not three arrows. when Luna happened was a big drop. When three arrows happened, it was okay. yeah, this is a Fallout effect from the other thing. um so uh, that kind of uh how I view the con the potential contagion effects. there will be some um, but I think the um the Major Impact is probably out, but don't quote me on that. um I I could be very wrong here. but um I I Think that the um uh I mean the the stuff that happened at FTX is like surprise is extremely surprising to everyone. um I mean if I was writing a fiction I couldn't imagine this stuff up right? So I think that that's that's really an outlier. Um, and um, the rest are probably just you know. um uh, what we call collateral. uh, collateral damage because of that and the effect should be smaller. Um, we'll see. Yeah, All right, thank you Anthony for the question. Next up is Dana Dana please go ahead hi, um I Hope you can hear me I'm having a bit of a communication issue. um I Wanted to know: are you guys going to reveal the data? the amount of withdrawals happening? Um, let's say in the following days, as you know, a lot of people are advising people to take out money out of the uh out of Finance out of everywhere to see that the companies are stable and sustainable because at the end of the day as I know, a lot of people are trading on binance and we do want to hold substantial amounts on the exchanges. but you know our trust is a bit broken and I wanted to know if uh, there's going to be transparency on uh, the amount of funds being withdrawn over you know, the period the uh, period ahead of us. Okay, Diana sorry about that. It seems like we've lost easy. Um, give me a second. oh sorry, sorry. um I was on mute. Um yeah, so uh uh sorry yeah. um so uh. we published our code wallet addresses like you know a few days ago and um, um, there's many third-party platforms that track those uh addresses and transfers on those addresses very carefully. Um I think there's has been no news about significant withdrawals from those addresses in the past few days. and whereas there has been news about significant withdrawals from other exchanges who have disclosed their addresses, so I think you guys can see that on Binance for us is is business as usual. Uh, we do see a slight increase in withdrawals, but it's not like you know, whenever whenever prices drop we see a we see a upticking withdrawals that's quite normal. Um, so for us we this is like kind of very Sim very in line with the price drops. We have not seen like you know, 80 drop withdrawals from a code wallet or 50 funds flowing out from our platform where it may be happening in some other smaller platforms. So for us it's still business as usual. The addresses are fairly transparent. people are tracking it. Um, yeah, that's that's pretty much it. Yeah, okay, nice and simple. Thank you Dana for the question. So I'll hand the mic over to RSA BTC Hello guys. Um, my question is regarding the USD um Susie Can you tell us if I have my bu ISD in cold storage and let's say hypothetical Finance uh I think it's breaking up? All right Thank you. Did you guys hear the question? All right yeah I think I Think the question was essentially how how safe is it to be holding Busd regardless of where you have it? So if you sorry I think I got me with that. Did you hear that? So if you want to hold it in Bud regardless where and then you got cut off if you want to hold it yeah, go ahead. um I Just like to know if I hold the obviously in my cold wallet and let's say hypothetical Finance goes under then I go to Paxos and Clay might be usually back from Paxos. Yes, absolutely. So Busd is issued by Paxos. Um, and that's the place to redeem it. Thank you! Okay, that's nice and easy. All right. Next up is Lani Lani Go ahead hi guys! Um first I Want to say thank you to CZ for all that you've been doing for the community. Uh, we truly appreciate you. Um I have two questions. My first question is regarding to um two Paxos. Are they FDIC insured If anything happens? Is it it guarantee that people can claim their money? Kind of piggyback on the question that they think when we asked and the second question is regarding with uh, we Trust wallets There's a lot of confusions out there. There's a lot of people saying um, binance owns Trust Wallet and they can take your money out of it I Kind of know the answer to this, but I want you to kind of clarify for a lot of people on the call so they know what's going on, how Binance and then Trust Wallet are kind of different in a bit in a way. Okay, so um, on the first question in the paxos um, the the insurance part the FDIC insurance I actually don't know the answer? um I would assume that if they don't publish on that website, they probably don't have it. um I actually never looked into it. What we care about much more is whether they whether the reserves are there in a bank. insurance is good, but my understanding is most insurance only cup only cover up to like no, uh, 250k or something some number like that. uh I'm not I'm not familiar with the insurance space. um and uh, so that's kind of on that. um maybe we'll try to get the answer from packs or some somewhere. Um, and also there has been, uh, there has been a lot of crypto companies claiming they have insurance, but I've never seen Insurance being paid out to crypto users ever in the past. Again, my information is limited. There may have been cases which where I don't know about. So um, that's on the FDIC Insurance part on the trust Valley part. It is much simpler. Um, we acquired Trust Wallet Um, three four years ago. So we do own the intellectual property rights Etc of Trust Wallet. But Trust Wallet is a open source. Um, uh. self-custody wallet. So you can download the source code, compile it for yourself. You can read through it first, Wallet, hold your own private keys on your device. It's not part of Binance.com It's not commingled. There's even post volume servers do not have access access to your private keys or the seeds. And if you if you miss if you lose that, if you lose your wallet. if you lose your device and don't have a dinner and lose your backup, there's no way for anybody to help you recover funds. Not Trust Wallet servers. Not Trustworldly team, Not Balance.com This is. This is the same as any other, well, any other proper self-custody wallet. So that's how trustable it works. Um, your funds on Trust Wallet is only controlled by you. You need to keep your device secure. You need to not lose it. And that's it. Yeah, Perfect. Okay, just before we go to the next question for everyone listening: I Know there's a lot of people here. I've been getting a few messages on the side saying that audio is cutting in and out I Think you know there's just a huge amount of people on the Twitter space so it's messing up for a few people. Just want to reassure you that this one will be fully recorded and we're gonna write up all of the important answers and things as well so there won't be a lot of information. Okay, so the next person on the mic is Crypto Palace or if Crypto Palace is not there and we'll pass over to Jess Oh God Yeah, um thank you very much for this wonderful opportunity. Um actually the reason why I'm coming up today is just to half visit. um lately. uh I was in a space with Mario that has been on for like 48 hours and um I see most of the uh some people don't discussing about binance insecurity that um, there are some that buyers is actually regulated but not following hello can you hear me? please? uh your lipid a little bit muted. Maybe you're covering your mic? Okay, can you hear me clearly now? Can you hear me so much better? Yeah yeah. okay good that um though Finance is regulated but there are some uh some things going on within the website which I think is it already talked about now? Okay, that okay if at all balance is regulated, why are some keynote security uh, risk issue is not addressed on the website? Okay and um they're talking about uh, some certain percentage in Busd Why is it such huge amount of money touch? huge amount in Busd? why not in USD Okay, and um, why this issue is going on I Got a message across why the space is going on that a particular regulated body is starting to function Finance On that particular issue, what is it actually doing about that thing and um I'll say there's there's been a controversy on the space of people uh, them giving advice that um, uh, people should move out their phone from every exchange. Now for adventure most of the finances have moved their phone away from Finance What is Binance open to do at the end of the day will get? Will everything still be in place? because moving the phone doesn't mean they are not attached or they are not. Uh, they will not be using Binance again, but just for security purpose. Is anyone following this question? The course declare most of them will still come up okay and then start using. but if everyone has advised, move their phone from Finance what might possibly be uh, the outcome from this lineup? okay, um I didn't quite catch the second question, but I'll try to answer the first and third one first. Um, and maybe Alex you can help me understand the second question I didn't quite catch it. Um, first of all, on the USD on the stable coin reserves uh or on the stable coin portions in Binance I think we answered that earlier in this chat or in this um AMA Um, and but on Usdt specifically today, Busd on Binance is like the larger portion I forgot the number I Saw a number this afternoon. um I think was like 20 or 19 or something like that. Usdt is like just slightly below that 18 or something, so the two together contributes to quite a large significant portion of the funds. I Actually, don't know what the exact number is on top of my head. Um, but Usdt is significant. Um, and it's Um, But Busd is large because when when users deposit Usdc, um, TUSD and a few other things, we convert them to Busd. When they withdraw, we convert back and give it back to them. It's one-to-one conversion. So we have agreements. We have agreements with Uh with the issuers for all of those, so that's uh, it's it's minimal risk. So um, that's so. as I said before, a exchange should have a healthy, especially in a bear Market that you have a significant chunk of stable coins in their wallet today. Um, if they don't have it, that's kind of weird. So Usdt we have a we have a pretty large chunk. um I just don't have the Um numbers in front of me. So um, the second. the third issue. Um, if people want to withdraw their funds, um, they should. We are a platform. Um, we we don't. We don't. block people from withdrawing their funds. It's really up to the users. Um, if they want to withdraw it to anywhere they can. Uh, we are here as a platform. If they want to deposit back and they want to trade on us, they can. Um, so nothing's gonna happen there. Well, not when people want to withdraw their funds. they just withdraw their funds. Nothing else more is going to happen there. So um, it doesn't cost us. It doesn't cost us any problems to be to be very. Frank Most people who know how to hold their funds on on their own and who don't trade often are probably already doing that already. So the people who are holding funds on binance while not trading are usually the type of the type of people who are not technical enough to hold funds to hold crypto on their own securely. So what? Like you know? even my friend Gabriel he advised people to withdraw withdraw funds to their own wallet. I Think that's a fine advice, but you have to take into consideration of how technical people are, whether for for the average person holding their crypto themselves. So they have to keep your computer secure, they have to keep your devices secure. They can't lose them. They got to have proper backup. The backups have to be encrypted and have to be stored in multiple places, and they have to have a way. They ideally if there's a significant amount of money, they should have a way to give it to their kids when they're no longer around. And how do they prevent their kids before that when they're still around? How do they prevent their kids from getting that? So, uh, most people are not technical enough to solve all of those problems today. Uh, the people who can solve all of these problems most likely are already storing funds on themselves. Uh, it does take quite a lot more work, which is fine. Um, so for us, we offer options if you know how to do that. Use Trust Wallet. use another Hardware wallet. Um, that's all good. if you can't do that. Asking people to withdraw funds to their phone to their to their own is fine. Um, but for longer term they they have a higher chance of losing that than storing that on a centralized exchange or on a trusted centralized exchange. So there are balances. Um, again, we just offer options we offer. We offer Trust Wallet as a hold your own asset wallet whereas Bonus.com the centralized exchange for you to hold on a centralized platform. We just offer options. We don't really care how well we don't really dictate how people should store their phones. You guys should decide for yourself. So um, nothing binance will be fine. Um. and also I can tell you today if everybody withdraw their funds from the centralized exchange, we'll just shut down the centralized exchange, We have many other profitable businesses uh that we have. Yeah, so um, it's fine. Yeah, okay, yeah. I think that covered it all. So easy. Thanks. So uh, we'll go back to Jeff Sorry, just thinking you're getting cut off that yeah thank you good morning. Susie Um, Hope next time we talk it's on better circumstances. Um, but two questions. So you recently made a comment about Um about exchanging moving large amounts of crypto before they demonstrate their wallet funds. Is there anything else that we should be looking out as far as a problem or red sign or red flag for other exchanges? That's my first question. and then my second question is mainly around the narrative that's being uh, spun by mainstream media. You've been the focus of a lot of the Articles including the initial tweet saying that you were selling. Um, being that we have a lot of media here, what would you have? What would you say about the narrative that's being pushed in MSM as far as crypto and what do you think hope will change in the upcoming weeks? Uh, sure. Um, Well, first of all, on the red signs of the dangerous signs. That's quite a lot. I will probably won't be able to sort of go through all of them, but I think the most important thing is probably just use your common sense. You know a business has to be profitable to be sustainable. Um, and if the business is offering High rebates, zero fees? Um, all of this stuff. Uh, which is fine. The bonus does part of it. but Binance has a very healthy business to cover it. Uh, but if uh, but if a business is not sustainable and they're just doing all this, uh, incentive to attract users, then um, that's probably the Mo. The health of the business is probably the most important sign. So you want to use a platform that's a sustainable that's profitable, that's healthy? Um, um, oh, this wallet. uh. transparencies. Um, the guys who doesn't do it um, are probably at a high risk. Um, the guys could do it wrong, are probably at a higher risk. Um, the guys who do it properly and no and no issues being reported by the community is probably good. Um, to a large extent, not guaranteed. Um. and I think the more uh, the more exchanges become more transparent, the better. So I think those are the two top of minds. But um, and generally speaking though, um, there is, they are very strong Network effects in the industry. The larger exchanges like Finance spends billions of dollars on security. A small exchange will not be able to afford that because they just don't have that level of income. So at the Econ, the economy of scale plays here. large exchange can spend that that kind of resources and budget on security compliance. Etc Whereas smaller exchanges are disadvantaged here. um, and not to mention liquidity. Best pricing Etc So those are just some high level things that people look at. Of course, there's a lot of little things. um I would try to be more vocal about it, but every time I'm vocal about something people think I'm attacking some competitor. Etc So there's a balance there. Um, we like honestly, we don't view other exchanges as competitors their their market share. um, they cut their volumes are if we take all of their volumes, we don't grow that much. Whereas if we grow the industry by 10x, we most likely will grow proportionally So we our small exchanges may want to get market share away from us. For us to get market share away from other smaller exchanges, it doesn't move the needle for us. So for us, we're much more focused on growing the industry instead of competing with some smaller exchange. Um, that's just not. that has never been how we work. So I Want to clear that misconception and the second point about media? That's a very. That's a very frustrating, somewhat frustrating experience. But I don't think we can change it in the short term. Um, if we look at the mainstream media, many of them either categorically uh says crypto is bad. Whenever there's a problem in crypto, they amplify it. Uh, when Madoff ran away with like 10 times when Madoff was Gone with 10 times more money 53 billion dollars or something or I don't remember the exact number. Um, it was just him. It was just his own problem. It wasn't the industry problem. Um so I Think the the narratives are a little bit unfair, but we're in a new industry so people are, um, skeptical of things. um, and also even within the industry, there are exchanges who are towarded as saviors of the Planet of the of the industry that just went down. uh, whereas um, they there's also The Narrative of um, uh, this large exchange got large because uh, because they do dodgy things. Um, that's completely not true. You only get large by earning users trust. So users today are quite smart. Social media Twitter information flows very quickly. So um, but it is what it is. It's just something we got to deal with. Um. but I'm very, very glad that we have Twitter Um, so Twitter allows us to get our voice out and we do have a decent following on Twitter now and on the other social media platforms as well. So social media is actually a great thing. A great tool for us to have. So I think that restores a level of balance. But more importantly, I think we over over the long run. we do have to work with traditional media, you know, the newspapers. Etc Um I Think we need to educate them. Uh, we need to. We need to. We need to. we need to teach them how to see through the sort of, um, just narratives. um I mean there was another article on the reserves. There was another article. There was an article recently by Bloomberg saying um, well the reserves. Uh, the first version of the article was, uh, more than 50 of the reserves on Binance are its own coins. Uh, when I read that I was like what? um and then we looked and you know it's a paid article which I I do not subscribe to. But even the first three lines they show that. Okay, most of it is in Busd which is not a coin that we issued. it used as a Binance brand, but it's not. it's not. BNB is only six percent. The second version of the story is the reserves are um 40 50 bonus brand is under its own brand. Okay, that's technically correct. Um, but it's very misleading and the way they use the wording, um, they the obviously the journalists think that our reserves are reserved meaning that when people want to withdraw, we convert at that time For them, they didn't. If you read the article carefully, they didn't even understand that our reserves are just the same form the user store with us. So if the user just happened to store all the USD with us, that's that's that's all we have. Um, we don't convert and so like it's not a it's not the reserve in the banking sense and the reserve in a crypto exchange sense are very different and we just need to educate the um, uh, the traditional media. So I think over time this will improve. but um, a first trading short term there will be pains here and there. But I think at the same time you know as a community they've been doing this for a while like this. this situation has been there for a while. I think you know as a community, especially what I see on Twitter um the guys were on Twitter are quite immune to it. We all know this is the case. So over time and the more we act and think like that, the less incentive for the media to do that because every time they do that every time they report something that's slightly off, that's a uh, that's that that has a bad narrative. Um, they they lose their credibility over time. they influence what diminish so it's not good for them. Long run the short term. they can create some sensation and sell a few more clicks. but longer term that's not going to work. So that's how that's kind of how I view media. Uh, we got to work with them. but we got to educate them. but you know at the end of the day the the the the the long-term right messages. Uh, accurate messages will prevail. Yeah, sorry for that long answer. Okay, excellent thank you Jess for both those questions. So next up is Felipe Felipe First, I'm going to ask you a question. Is that a verified Blue Tick or a Twitter Blue Blue Tick you've got there. Oh I'm a Twitter uh Twitter Blue Tick for a while before the verified even became a thing. So it's just a perk that kind of got stoned. I Didn't Do It For The Tick I Did it just for the other features like edit Great. Okay, what's your question? Uh yeah, a question is great. Uh, so uh. my question is focused actually on the Binance Branded exchanges. I Know they're separate entities, but they do hold the Binance name and if any one of those exchanges have issues, it does hurt Binance name as a whole. So will you be able to push those exchanges to publish their proof of liquidity? And overall, Business Health Uh, that's a good point. Um, we we probably could. and we should. Um, so there's a few that's buying a turkey that no longer is buying a Singapore We have to shut that down. Um, there's a few out there. Um, that's a good suggestion. We should. Probably we should ask them to do it. Cool. Thanks! Felipe Okay, next up is Jose F this is Jose from Benzinga. My question is, do you think it's possible that exchanges are sending funds to fake the proof of research and would what you were discussing with Vitalik the proof of Reserve protocol Solve this issue and how? um, well, number one um I don't know for sure what's going on in other exchanges Finance I can tell you that we do not do that. um and I think there's been no reported suspicious activity Etc related to us. For the other players we can't I don't like I don't know their books I can't comment Well I can't really be sure. Um, but it's just not a very good thing to do. Then they have, they may have a valid reason for it or they may not I don't really know. um but it is a it is A it is a red flag so um, uh, just be a little bit more careful. um and um the proof of Reserve protocol uh to be honest I had a very brief discussion uh with uh Vitalik. um I think he has it in his head, probably some kind of design and he he he's very technical. he's very um deep into this stuff. Uh, we didn't discuss in a lot of detail but my Approach would be like I would connect him with our team and then they'll figure it out. Um, we want to be the guinea pig for it and see if uh, see how well it works. Yeah great. Okay next up is Zelu Hello okay please go ahead hello. it's easy I want to talk to you about the investment to FTX that you did and how gave the exchange legitimacy to a lot of users like myself that went on the platform believing it was trustworthy. It doesn't seem fair for you to sell your steak and end up profiting while so many users were left with losses. Oh, and in all likelihood it was probably the user's funds that FTX gave you in order not to raise any Flags about their balance sheet. Do you feel obligated to give that money back to the FTX users? Um I think we exited us other investors came in. so I don't know what the is is. It's not possible to say which part of the funds are which. Um I don't have not seen the transaction records Etc Uh, we invested quite early. we left. we we exited quite early. Both events are very public. Uh, we did not hide it, we did not not disclose it. Um I understand the sentiment. We actually also have you know we had five 580 million worth of Ftt. We sold a small portion of it. we still hold a large bag. Um so I think we acted in very ethical ways. Um and um I don't want to cut I don't want to categorically sort of say hey, we must give the money back or not Etc We will try to do things to help the Ftt user the FTX users but the FTX users um uh are the FTF users choose to use FTX on their behalf right? So the information is public. I Don't want to create a situation where every anything goes down in the industry, buyers have to pay for it. Um I don't think that's right for our users and for our people. So I want to do what's fair? Um I want to protect the users. We want to help the industry to grow. But I don't want to category categorically commit binance to solve every problem and be responsible for every problem. Be responsible for every user loss in the industry. So I got to be fair to our users. If we do that, Finance will probably become a a either bankrupt pretty soon. Etc That's unfair to our users. So um and on this point I would also say look as a user you also have no responsibility. You can't just blame all the response responsibility to other people. When bad things happen you if you blame all responsibility always to other people, you will never be successful. You are always looking at the most responsible person for yourself which is yourself right? So when this FTX issue happens, many people have a lot of different responsibilities. I Think look, the does the regulator have have responsibility? Yes. But do they have full responsibility? Should they compensate all the users? Probably No. Because regulations doesn't prevent a bad actor from acting as a bad actor, There are punishments. they are rules. but if a bad actor just want to be a bad actor and you can't prevent it per se in this case. I think they were lying. Um, they were the light FTX light. Well I think Sam lied to his employees, his users, his shareholders. um Regulators all around the world and all all the users. So yes, he should take the most of the blame. But at the same time, every the VC investors including us, why did we invest them I think that accusation was actually somewhat accurate. All the investing investors that invest in FTX made a mistake and many of them are very professional investors. Why did I not discover this problem? Some of them are very large funds. Why did I not discover this problem so we can? We can. We can look into that, but again, are they fully responsible for this problem? Should they compensate all the users? Probably No. So um, everybody have responsibilities here. Finance We we take our responsibilities seriously. but I don't want a categorize categorically promise or binance is going to commit to everything Etc So that's that's kind of my take I Hope that's fair. All right. Thank you Zelu for the question. So moving on now to Umbrella Yeah, Firstly, thanks CZ for kind of speaking your mind on Twitter you saved me and a lot of people. Um, you know our last savings was kind of what you promoted on Htx and I guess on that is what are your thoughts of Twitter as a community town hall? and how do we bring more light to people like the Dev who I noticed you followed on Twitter and he kind of warned us about SBF and what FTX were doing and kind of saved quite a few people. um, from a retail perspective money? um and then secondly on the the proof of reserves. Um, don't you think it's more prudent actually to fraud an API with live wallet addresses and this can be integrated into the June dashboard? Um, rather than snapshots because you know it's Wallets on chain? Um, anyone can see what those balances are. Um, like you provide apis for your your trading Etc I Don't see why you know exchanges, client providers, apis. um D5 protocols do it all the time. Sure. Um, okay. I think those are two interesting questions. Um I think on the first one. Um I think many people have tried to warn their issues here and there. Um, way before things happened. Um, you know there's multiple Twitter multiple Twitter Kols multiple uh news articles Etc Um, but the um. it's impossible to say conclusively there were problems no one like without full access to to Ft FTX database, Alameda's trading records, all the contracts Etc It would take like a very strong auditor to go through all of those things to to say for like 100 sure this is the problem and this is how big the problem is. I Think it's going to take many months for uh for people to figure that out even though like No And even with what happened now. So why all of these Kls? Um, they are trying to warn users. The people may or may not trust them and to be honest, their information may or may not be 100 correct so you never really know. Um, at the end of the day you have to apply a level of judgment yourself. Um so um yeah. I mean even even even me? um I didn't know they were that insolvent until Sam called me. Um, these things like we can suspect from outside, but it's kind of hard to know for sure unless you have full access to the data all the internal workings Etc which very few people had. Wow. I think um and also that's like there's also a lot of people who try to spread, uh, fake information to create thought, um uncertainty doubt Etc in the market just to put move the price around a little bit. Maybe they hold it, maybe they just bought or maybe they just sold and they want to influence price the other way. So it's kind of hard to tell some sometimes. But look at the end of the day, follow the follow the Kol you trust and you should have a good judgment on trusting good kols. If if you don't, if you follow bad Kol that turn out to give you wrong advice, unfollow them or long term, you will likely lose money. Um, well lose more money than you would Um and um. But yeah so but no one has conclusive information on the second part with an API Etc I Think that's okay, but there are different um, uh, there are different interests of uh, there are different alignment of Interest issues For example, Um, if Binance wants to publish our API we would prefer to use coin market cap. Would every other exchange want to do that? I'm not sure. Um and which Central platform do we use? Um And this, and we're talking about this. We're talking about exchanges globally, right? Um, and Um for exchanges By providing that data in real time, they are giving value to the to the platform they're providing. Is there a commercial agreement or some kind of incentive alignment either through shareholdings or some some other some other way to align the commercial interest. If that model is not in place, not every exchange will collaborate with that platform. So in a decentralized, uh, pla, even decentralized ecosystem, this, these things have to be built organically. There's no. there's no one that says okay for every water transaction you have, you have to report to this API and their performance issues, right? So so um, there are a myriad of issues I Think the first step we can do is to say hey, why don't why don't we lead as example and we make binders much more transparent. um other exchange you can try to do it. Um, and when there's a common standard somehow emerges over, if there's a common practice, it emerges. Over a period of time, Somebody will probably try to make a platform to sort of collect all those information and make a make a coin market cap kind of a platform to show that there are already many data and analytics Platforms in the in the ecosystem, but they may not be as advanced as you as you described. And lastly, there are privacy issues, right? So if every time that somebody creates a new withdrawal address and is published online Etc Um, they could be privacy concerned. Um, so there's a lot of different considerations. It's not as simple as okay. we just published all the information publicly and any everyone can look at it in Ideal World if, uh, when if the human civilization is Advanced enough. Yes, we can make all the data uh, completely transparent. but we bring to privacy issues today so there are many different considerations to be considered. It's not just a simple hey, let's publish all this data. Yes, you will. You may solve one problem, but you may create other problems. So as an industry, we just have to explore and learn. So that's kind of what we're doing today.