According to crypto analysis firm Nansen, $1.6 billion in withdrawals for ETH and ERC20 tokens were triggered on Binance in the last 24 hours. The firm noted that over the week, a total of $1.9 billion have been withdrawn from the world’s largest crypto exchange. However, the current withdrawals are still less than the $2.3 billion weekly Netflow resulting from the FTX collapse.
According to the chart shared by Nansen, the total inflow of Ethereum into Binance in the last 24 hours was $935 million. Meanwhile, the outflow in the same time frame was $2.5 billion. On the other hand, weekly inflow stands at $4.68 billion, while Ethereum outflow stands at $6.60 billion.
Why is Binance witnessing such large outflows?
The outflows are most likely a response to a recent report regarding the US Prosecutors office considering filing charges against Binance. The allegations against the exchange are for violating sanctions and money laundering.
However, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, aka CZ, asked users not to worry and called the allegations as FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt).
Nonetheless, if charges are filed against the exchange and its management, its hold on the market might be weakened. Furthermore, a criminal trial would devastate the cryptocurrency industry, which is already experiencing a decline.
Moreover, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was arrested earlier today. The collapse of FTX led to Binance gaining much more strength in the crypto space. Hence, an investigation against the exchange would lead to it losing all the gains it made of late.
Furthermore, the push for self-custody is another growing sentiment in the crypto community. The FTX collapse has caused much distrust of exchanges, regardless of how trustworthy they might seem.
The allegations against Binance have led to its native token, BNB, falling 7.6% in the weekly charts. Moreover, the token has fallen by 5.2% in the daily charts.
At press time, BNB was trading at $266.64.