Through the week, information attacks on Binance grew. CZ, Binance's CEO, was forced to take the defensive and busily engage in his clarification to wide audiences. Rumors abound that Binance's blackmailing is rooted in the attempt of the largest crypto exchange to take over FTX. This was to get records of thousands of American crypto account and possibly some not-so-public information.

Auditing company Mazars' decision to suspend work on verifying Binance's audit reports did not appear to be driven by any specific financial concerns. The audit firm's scope of responsibility was so limited that it did not have tools to closely monitor the daily transaction log and evaluate its consistency.

Some Mazars speakers expressed concern that, despite the standard disclaimers in their reports, the firm was “endorsing a very volatile sector”, and felt that it was “naive” and even “reckless” to take on this kind of job. In fact, Mazars assumed the task of creating proof of reserve reports for Binance and other crypto exchanges, including Crypto.com and KuCoin. The latter, without waiting for the results of the audit, hurried to convince nervous clients that they had sufficient assets to match the entire volume of client deposits.

Binance, in turn, once again stated that the absence of specific claims in the Mazars report is “additional confirmation” that the exchange’s assets equal or exceed its liabilities to customers.

“Binance [successfully] passed an equivalent of stress test last week that should give the community complete reassurance that their funds are safe,” the exchange said on Friday, adding that it was able to honor the recent flood of withdrawals without any hiccups. Binance also stated that its assets of more than $60 billion are more than sufficient for a one-time withdrawal of an order of magnitude larger amount of funds.

However, once again, the company's disclosures do not include an analysis of its liabilities, which makes it difficult to fully determine its financial condition. To prepare the reserves' confirmation report, the auditor used procedures agreed with the company that did not give him the opportunity to “endorse all the figures” to reality – however, this is common practice in many standard audit reports, so there is nothing alarming in that statement. The auditor also makes no guarantees or opinions about the figures in the report, as would be possible with a full financial audit.

In a recent interview with CNBC, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao declined to confirm whether the exchange would be able to fund a potential $2.1 billion return from FTX if the funds were requested as part of FTX's bankruptcy proceedings. The head of Binance CZ, when asked by a CNBC host, replied: “Many of the big four audit firms do not know how to audit cryptocurrency exchanges.”

However, a second wave of rumors and gossip erupted on the internet when the accounting firm announced that it was “suspending its activity related to the provision of reserve confirmation reports for organizations in the cryptocurrency sector due to concerns about how these reports are understood by the public.” According to an article in the Financial Times, the unhealthy level of media attention to the issue was also a factor in Mazars' decision.

From the latest news: the world press reported that the founder of the bankrupt FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, was eventually arrested. Sam, the drama’s poster child, first declared the bankruptcy of the exchange, but now he seems to have said that he regretted that decision. Was it because FTX was targeted for acquisition by none other than the same CEO of Binance Chang Pengzhao or CZ – is anyone’s guess.

What’s particularly interesting is that FTX went belly up surprisingly instantly for a structure of this caliber, and many investors immediately lost all their funds, and this is a very strange decision – not to give an opportunity and time for a company of this level to search and find its “white knight”. It is also important that Sam, as many know, has been a prominent sponsor of the U.S. Dems and was going to invest profoundly in it in the upcoming presidential elections. Hence, the main question: whether big politics was involved in this story – will remain in the haze. Nevertheless, it is obvious that in the course of the much more dramatic bankruptcy of one of the most highly capitalized stablecoins, Terra/LUNA back in May, the founding father of the coin, Korean Do Kwon, also on the run, was not honored even remotely as close attention of the world’s mainstream media as FTX.