Mazars Group, a French consulting company, has deleted a Proof of Reserves report for cryptocurrency exchange Binance, citing "concerns" regarding the way such sort of reports "are understood by the public."
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According to a report from CNBC, the consulting company has stopped offering services to all crypto businesses, including Binance, KuCoin and Crypto.com. Although Mazars pointed out that proof of reserves reports are "performed in accordance with Reporting Standards," it added that these reports "do not constitute either an assurance or an audit opinion on subject matter."
"Instead they report limited findings based on the agreed procedures performed on the subject matter at a historical point in time," the spokesperson said.
After cryptocurrency exchange FTX went bankrupt, many crypto exchanges rushed to calm down their customers about safety of their reserves. Binance was one of the first exchanges, which were actively pushing the idea of auditing reserves to provide additional transparency on its reserves.
However, once Mazars published a detailed report on Binance's reserves in bitcoin, many users in the crypto community noted that the document had nothing to do with a real audit as it was based on "agreed-upon procedures," without any expert conclusion from the firm.
When Binance Founder, Changpeng Zhao, was asked in an interview with CNBC on why the exchange refused to get a Big Four auditor to check its reserves, Zhao said that "many of them don't know how to audit crypto exchanges."
Coinbase, an American publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange, has been audited by Deloitte, one of the Big Four accounting giants. As per a report from the Financial Times, Deloitte gave Coinbase an unqualified audit opinion, meaning the data provided by the exchange was accurate and fair, however, organization flaws with the regulator were still present.
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