The term “commingling” has become a common and unwanted word in the crypto industry after the collapse of FTX exchange last year

Binance took to Twitter Tuesday to counter reports that it merged funds.

Earlier Tuesday, Reuters issued a special report citing unidentified ex company “insiders” who stated the cryptocurrency exchange merged customer funds with its own revenue.

The report stated these funds ran into billions of dollars and that commingling took place just about daily in accounts Binance had at Silvergate Bank, a crypto-friendly lender which self-liquidated earlier in 2023. The news outlet stated it found no proof customer funds were taken or lost.

It also quotes former regulators who say the situation narrated by ex-employees indicates a lack of internal measures at Binace to sort out funds.

Patrick Hillman, Binance’s communications chief, countered the news, calling it “weak,” “desperate” and “full of conspiracy theories” in a lengthy post on Twitter.

The entire basis of their story, is that when users bought BUSD (Paxos) from Binance, they were taken to a transaction page that had the word ‘deposit’ on it, Hillman stated. Users were making a purchase of a Stablecoin that was redeemable by Paxos, which was specifically mentioned on the page.

Hillman further said in a later tweet that the firm has addressed the problem a number of times, stating Binance keeps user and firm funds on different ledgers.

The term “commingling” has become a common and unwanted word in the crypto industry after the collapse of FTX exchange last year.

According to court documents filed in March, what John J. Ray III, who became Chief Executive Officer after the firm’s collapse, mentioned as a “massive shortfall” of “highly commingled assets” at FTX, representing more than $8.6bln in liabilities across all customer wallets and enterprise accounts.

And Binance has been accused of commingling funds earlier. According to a January report by Bloomberg News, the firm inadvertently kept collateral for tokens in the same wallet as customer assets.

According to that report, reserves for nearly half of the B-Tokens that the crypto platform issues were kept in a wallet that also held assets of customers using its exchange. This went against firm’s guidelines, which are to store the collateral separately. The report also stated Binance was aware of the mistake and said it would move the funds to other wallets.