Binance is collaborating with accounting firm Mazars, which served as the company’s longtime accountant while Donald Trump was president of the United States as part of the proof-of-reserve (PoR) audits brought on by the demise of FTX.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 30 that Mazars, the accounting firm that worked for the business of former US President Donald Trump, had been chosen as the official auditor to carry out a “third party financial verification” as part of Binance’s PoR upgrades.
The accounting firm has already started reviewing all of the information on Bitcoin that has been made publicly available according to a spokesperson for Binance. PoR and will also be verifying upcoming updates and tokens. The representative continued, “The first BTC verification update will be completed this week.”
Mazars is a global accounting company with its headquarters in Paris. Trump’s longtime accounting firm in the United States, Mazars USA, has been embroiled in controversy since 2019 over a request for some of his financial records from the House Oversight and Reform Committee. According to reports, the company severed relations with Trump and his family in 2022.
The announcement coincides with Binance’s recent large-scale cryptocurrency transfers for its PoR audits. On Nov. 28, Binance sent 127,351 BTC, or roughly $2 billion, to an unidentified wallet. Following the transaction, CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao revealed that it was a part of the ongoing PoR process.
The move has raised some questions in the community because, according to CZ, it’s bad news when exchanges have to transfer significant amounts of cryptocurrency to verify their wallet addresses.
Binance introduced a PoR procedure and mechanism in reaction to the failure and bankruptcy of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. One of several steps taken by Binance to demonstrate its openness was the publication of Merkle Tree-backed proof of funds for Bitcoin on November 25 by the company.
Following the FTX crash, many other exchanges including OKX and KuCoin hurried to submit their PoR reports, showing that Binance is not alone in making significant efforts to protect the trust of its clients. Meanwhile, some industry watchers think that the exchanges’ current PoR method is mainly ineffective unless they additionally give liabilities, which are exceedingly difficult to forge.