Coinbase CEO reaffirms exchange’s BTC holdings after CZ’s tweet

Coinbase chief executive officer Brian Armstrong is reassuring users about the financial health of the Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange, following a potentially damaging tweet – since deleted – from Changpeng Zhao (informally known as CZ), CEO of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, Binance.

See related article: Binance the winner in FTX saga, set to gain more customers

In his now-deleted tweet, CZ quoted a news report that said Coinbase Custody, which provides crypto custody solutions to institutional investors, holds 635K BTC on behalf of digital asset manager Grayscale. He ended the tweet by quoting another news report from four months ago that said Coinbase had less than 600K BTC and said he “assumed” the second report was for the Coinbase exchange.

CZ’s tweet, which appeared to imply insufficient Bitcoin reserves at Coinbase, prompted Armstrong to tweet that if anyone is experiencing FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), Coinbase’s financials are public for all to see and that the exchange held approximately 2 million BTC as of Sept. 30.

CZ subsequently acknowledged he’d been informed by Armstrong that the numbers quoted in the article were wrong and he deleted his previous tweet, but not before drawing some strong reactions from Twitterati and Redditors.

Crypto analyst and investor @360_trader called CZ’s tweet and its subsequent deletion a clown show, while Will Clemente, cofounder of digital asset research firm Reflivity, said while he gets CZ is trying to protect the industry, but the tweeting and deleting are not a good look for the Binance CEO and he is smart enough to know the difference between exchange and custody wallets.

CZ’s past tweets have been seen by many crypto industry participants as being instrumental in the undoing of former rival and now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX.

See related article: Binance says it will set up crypto recovery fund, industry standards group