| It’s been a bad week for crypto. And not just for Sam Bankman-Fried who was arrested Monday in the Bahamas on charges related to money laundering, wire and securities fraud, and campaign finance violations.
His arch nemesis and former mentor, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, saw billions worth of crypto assets flee his exchange over a few days period.
The slew of withdrawals from the world’s largest crypto exchange came on the heels of a report that criminal charges could be filed against Zhao and Binance related to alleged money laundering and sanctions violations.
At one point, withdrawals of one of the more popular stable coins, USDC, was halted on Binance, which was blamed on a technical error.
The Binance sell off led other crypto companies to huddle and plot out worst-case scenarios if the exchange were to collapse altogether.
Fortune’s crypto editor Jeff John Roberts spent his week talking to people in and around Binance to get to the bottom of the question on everyone’s minds:
How stable is Binance, really? Could it ultimately collapse like FTX did?
Roberts found that while the Binance situation is unsettling—and still, no one really knows what its balance sheet looks like—most are not predicting full-on insolvency for now.
You can read Jeff’s full report on the state of Binance, according to industry insiders, below. |
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