Bybit Reveals Exchange Holding Wallet Addresses

On November 16th, popular crypto exchange Bybit made the addresses of its biggest crypto wallets public. This followed the collapse of FTX and industry calls for increased transparency. It was through a recent press release that Bybit had listed the addresses.

Blockchain analytics firm Nansen also created a dashboard of Bybits wallets, which is an indication that the exchanges assets total more than $1 billion in Bitcoin, USD Coin, Tether, and Ethereum. According to the press release, these assets account for more than 85% of the total crypto held by the exchange.

Following the FTX disaster, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has advocated for all exchanges to develop a proof-of-reserves protocol that will demonstrate to the community that their assets are equal to or greater than their liabilities.

As it does not provide a Merkle tree of the exchanges liabilities to customers, Bybits release of wallet addresses would not be considered as PoR. However, releasing the wallet addresses is a requirement for later creation of a proof of reserve, should Bybit choose to do so.