Mazars says users' BTC reserves on Binance are fully collateralized

cointelegraph.com:

According to a new document published on Dec. 7, South-African auditor Mazars confirmed that cryptocurrency exchange Binance possessed control over 575,742.42 of customers' Bitcoins (BTC) worth $9.7 billion at the time of publication. Through the process, Mazars stated that "Binance was 101% collateralized."

The scope of the inquiry included customers' spot, options, margin, futures, funding, loan, and earn accounts for Bitcoin and wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC). Aside from the Bitcoin network, BTC wrapped on Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Binance Smart Chain were also included in the inquiry.

As part of its proof-of-reserves pledge, Binance requested an agreed-upon-procedures (AUP), or an audit that is limited in scale, as of Nov. 22. Commenting on the results, Mazars wrote that:

As disclosed in its procedures, Mazars independently obtained the nominal value of Binance customers' assets by testing a variety of wallet addresses controlled by the exchange. Auditors asked Binance to transfer assets to designated addresses and back in order to verify proof of ownership. In addition, the firm used its software to aggregate client data it obtained and computed the Merkle Root Hash. This allowed Binance's clients to verify their Merkle Leaf independently and cryptographically as being part of the Merkle Root.