Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world by trading volume, was at the edge of a knife yesterday, with several criminal charges levelled against the exchange itself, and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao.
According to reports the founder and CEO of Binance, Changpeng 'CZ' Zhao agreed to step down as part of a record settlement with the U.S. authorities.
Earlier in the year, the US Department of Justice accused Binance of operating an "illegal money laundering venture", and as a result, Binance is also set to exit the U.S. market completely.
Let's see how investors have reacted to this news so far.
Just like what we saw with FTX when its financial woes first started, many Binance users rushed to withdraw their funds and crypto from the exchange when the news hit the internet.
According to a recent tweet from the head of research of 21.co, Binance has seen net outflows of about 2.2 billion USD over the last day.
This amount of outflows is way above normal, due to investors hurriedly withdrawing their funds out of fear.
However, Binance has tried to reassure its users that it remains operational, and still has about $67 billion worth of tokens and stablecoins in its reserves.
Data from Dune Analytics also corroborates these facts and shows that while $2,88 billion has left the exchange so far in the last 24 hours, about $1.85 billion has also come in.
Interestingly enough, BNB was one of the most bullish cryptocurrencies yesterday, after gaining about 10% initially.
However, over the last day, the cryptocurrency has taken another 10% slump and has erased all of the previous day's gains.
Data from Dune Analytics also shows that BNB was the most deposited and withdrawn token in the past 24 hours, followed by other popular tokens such as USDT, ETH, and BTC.
Even more interesting is how some of the largest withdrawals and deposits were made by addresses that are linked to institutional investors and brokers like Crypto.com and Wintermute Trading.
Things may not look so good for Binance if these entities are moving their funds to other exchanges or platforms for arbitrage or liquidity purposes.
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