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.
