Binance inflows: CEO Changpeng CZ Zhao takes on, sinks competitors with pointed tweets
Updated
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has taken aim at competitors after the collapse of the FTX exchange last week sparked turmoil in the industry.
Sharing on Twitter, Zhao recently said that Binance has a policy to “not comment on competitors”. But he admitted that he has broken this rule.
1/3 We have a policy to not comment on competitors (we call industry peers) publicly. I broke this rule only a few times in the past.
— CZ ???? Binance (@cz_binance) November 12, 2022
July 7th, I tweeted this:https://t.co/qvVfLhtTx5 pic.twitter.com/AJ86k9X96j
He tweeted: “Going forward, I will break this policy a bit and be more vocal about issues I see in the industry. May cause more ‘debates’ or more fight memes. But that’s not my intention. It’s to reduce risk.”
FTX conflict
The rival exchanges FTX and Binance have clashed together once again last week. This kicked off when Binance started dumping its holdings of FTX’s native FTT token. The downfall of FTT and a liquidity crisis eventually led to FTX’s bankruptcy.
Zhao took to Twitter on 8 November taking aim at FTX. He advised other exchanges to “never use a token you created as collateral” and “don’t borrow if you run a crypto business”.
Two big lessons:
— CZ ???? Binance (@cz_binance) November 8, 2022
1: Never use a token you created as collateral.
2: Don’t borrow if you run a crypto business. Don't use capital "efficiently". Have a large reserve.
Binance has never used BNB for collateral, and we have never taken on debt.
Stay #SAFU.????
Binance later revealed it planned on acquiring the collapsed exchange and the FTX ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried attempted to calm tension between the two.
He tweeted: “I know that there have been rumours in media of conflict between our two exchanges, however Binance has shown time and again that they are committed to a more decentralized global economy while working to improve industry relations with regulators.”
Yet, this deal eventually fell through after Binance cited due diligence issues.
Crypto.com’s wallet mistake
In the quickly developing world of crypto, Zhao has criticised another exchange.
News recently broke that the trading platform Crypto.com had accidentally sent $400m ETH to the wrong address.
Kris Marszalek, the exchange’s CEO, said they intended to move the funds to a new cold storage address on 29 October, but accidentally transferred the assets to Gate.io, another trading platform.
While these funds were eventually recovered by the Crypto.com team, Zhao attacked the exchange. He tweeted: “If an exchange have to move large amounts of crypto before or after they demonstrate their wallet addresses, it is a clear sign of problems. Stay away.”
The Skyrex exploit
Binance appeared to have problems of its own. A Twitter user who goes under the handle CarlosOMFG said someone had accessed his Binance account and bought millions of dollars worth of axie infinity (AXS).
After talking with Carlos, Zhao discovered the exploit was actually down to the Skyrex trading bot platform, which had control of his API key. Zhao claimed Skyrex had leaked his API key, which allowed a hacker to access his Binance account.
He also tweeted: “We will try to disable all API keys that was used by Skyrex, figuring out how to identify them now.”
Carlos confirmed the unrecognized orders were due to his API key leakage. He only has one active API key and it was used on Skyrex, a crypto trading bot platform. We will try to disable all API keys that was used by Skyrex, figuring out how to identify them now. https://t.co/cOANWOyAou
— CZ ???? Binance (@cz_binance) November 14, 2022
Zhao said there are now three confirmed cases of users who had shared their API keys with third parties and were experiencing unusual trading. He encouraged traders to disable their API keys.
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