[The Exiled]

Following the settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Binance, the world’s leading crypto exchange by trading volume, has experienced a significant withdrawal of approximately $1.7 billion in digital assets. Within just a 12-hour window on Wednesday, the exchange reported a decrease of $17 million in ethereum (ETH) and, within a 24-hour timeframe, a staggering $956 million worth of various prominent cryptocurrencies exited Binance. At noon the same day, the exchange’s reserves stood at $64.98 billion. Of this, 28.94% is in tether (USDT), while bitcoin (BTC) constitutes roughly 28.7% of the portfolio. Ethereum (ETH) accounts for 10.13%, trueusd (TUSD) makes up 4.6%, and BNB represents 4.31%. The remaining 23.32% of Binance’s reserves is spread across numerous other unnamed cryptocurrencies.

Crypto exchange Binance and its CEO pleading guilty to money laundering charges sheds new light on why the company may have been moving billions worth of stablecoins in the weeks before the settlement was finalized. $3.9 billion Tether (USDT) transaction, completed on November 9, is uncannily close in value to the $4.3 billion penalty that Binance agreed to pay as part of its settlement. Most of the money moved out of one Binance cold wallet (Binance-Cold 2) into another of its wallets (Binance 3). The cold wallet currently holds $6.6 billion worth of funds—$4 billion of it in USDT and the rest in various stablecoins like Decentralized USD (USDD), USDC, and TrueUSD (TUSD). Meanwhile, the destination wallet now holds $3.2 billion in assets, most of it Tether’s USDT stablecoin. Binance has previously described its cold wallets as responsible for holding the bulk of company funds.