The 'Comprehensive Overview' Provided by Huobi
When it unveiled its so-called "proof of reserves" on November 12, the cryptocurrency exchange Huobi, which is based in the Seychelles, became the latest digital asset exchange to attempt to assuage the concerns of its users. In the "exhaustive overview" of digital assets that Huobi provided, it was revealed that the cryptocurrency exchange had approximately 32,000 BTC, 274,000 ETH, and 820 million USDT stablecoins, in addition to 9.7 billion TRX tokens.
In addition to divulging the value of the digital assets held by the company in U.S. dollars, which was $3.5 billion, Huobi also shared a snapshot of the list of addresses where the funds are being stored. The disclosure of Huobi's digital asset holdings came just two days after the bankruptcy filing of FTX, which was accused of misusing the funds of its cryptocurrency clients.
Huobi, which was acquired by the About Capital buyout fund in October, suggested in a statement that such disclosure helps to reassure concerned users. Huobi was acquired by About Capital. Other cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Binance, Crypto.com, Deribit, Kucoin, and Okx, had already provided their own individual proof-of-reserves (POR) through the use of Merkle trees and full audits prior to Huobi's public unveiling of its own proof of reserves. Users are able to monitor their token holdings and transactions when cryptocurrency exchanges display PORs, as stated in the report. This enables users to track their token holdings.
In the meantime, the cryptocurrency exchange announced that it planned to further bolster the confidence of its users by making the display of PORs a standard practice going forward.
A statement issued by the cryptocurrency exchange read, "To further enhance users' confidence and accelerate our efforts in improving transparency, we are working to perform another Merkle Tree Proof of Reserves audit with a third party within the next 30 days." The statement was in response to a question about when the next audit would take place.
