Mary King
On Dec. 23, Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao shared his thoughts on Twitter regarding the fear, uncertainty, and distrust (FUD) surrounding crypto exchanges recently.
CZ, in his thread, declared that Binance’s FUD is largely attributed to external sources rather than the exchange itself.
The CEO mentioned that part of the crypto community detests centralization as one of the reasons. “Regardless if a CEX helps with crypto adoption at a faster rate, they just hate CEX,” he noted.
CZ mentioned that Binance has been perceived as a competitor by many players in the industry, with them actively attempting to undermine the exchange by investing large sums of money into small media outlets significantly exceeding their market value, such as in the case of The Block's CEO, Mike McCaffrey, who secretly funded the crypto news platform through loans from Alameda Research.
On Dec. 9, McCaffrey resigned from his role as CEO after revealing he had taken out two loans worth a combined $27 million from FTX Group's hedge fund.
CZ mentioned that conservative politicians who are seeking to conserve traditional financial organizations from crypto transformation are propagating false information. He noted that “being conservative is not incorrect,” however financial institutions should accept blockchain technology rather than fighting against advancement.
CZ concluded by suggesting that a "tiny number of people who are jealous, or just plain racist against Chinese-looking Canadians" could be the source of the FUD around the exchange.
Since the downfall of FTX, investors have taken action by transferring their crypto assets to self-custody and other exchanges due to the FUD surrounding Binance. These fears range from a lack of liquidity on the exchange to suspicions of inadequate reserves and ongoing investigations in the U.S., leading to billions of dollars fleeing the exchange in recent weeks.
On Dec. 22, Cointelegraph reported that Binance had published a blog post in Chinese that addressed seven important issues they wanted to clear up.