How to read an exchange's proof of reserves, and what it cannot tell you

A proof of reserves shows assets on one side of a venue’s ledger at one moment in time. On its own it says nothing about what the venue owes, which means it cannot by itself tell you whether customer balances are backed.

That distinction matters right now because of a specific sequence of events. According to CNBC on 30 October 2026, as compiled in the account of the October 2026 Binance incident, roughly 6.3 billion US dollars in crypto assets left Binance wallets on 29 October 2026 across ten blockchains: Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tron, XRP Ledger, Solana, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Avalanche and Polygon. The BBC reported on 30 October that Binance intended to publish proof of reserves on 2 November 2026. We have not read that disclosure, and this page is about what a document of that kind can and cannot establish.

We read that compiled account and its citations on 1 November 2026. Every third-party figure on this page is attributed to the outlet and the day the compilation names. None of it is our own investigation, and we have not read Binance’s proof of reserves.

What a per-asset ratio actually states

Where a disclosure reports a ratio for an individual asset, a ratio above 100 per cent on that asset means the venue showed holdings exceeding the balances it reported for it. Three qualifiers travel with that sentence and none of them are optional:

• It applies to one asset. A ratio on bitcoin says nothing about the venue’s position in a stablecoin, a token on its own chain, or the venue as a whole.
• It applies to the balances the venue reported. The denominator is the venue’s own number.
• It applies to the moment the snapshot was taken, and the figure carries that date.

Strip any of those away and the statement stops being true.

How we handled this on our own OKX page

We have read and published a venue’s own reserve disclosure once, for OKX. Our page on whether OKX is safe was built from what that venue published, and it records the date we read the page rather than the date the venue assigned to the figures, because those are two different things and only one of them is ours to state. That is a small discipline with a real consequence: if we had collapsed the two dates, a reader would have had no way to tell how stale the figures were when we quoted them.

That page also sets out a distinction we keep running into. A past legal outcome and a current published reserve ratio are different kinds of evidence, and neither is a promise about a reader’s money. A reserve page tells you something narrow and checkable. It does not tell you that your balance is safe.

The questions a reserve page does not answer

It does not show liabilities the venue has not reported. A disclosure shows what the venue reported it owes. There is no step in reading the page where you verify that figure. You are reading one side of a ledger and a number the venue supplied for the other side.

It does not survive the moment it was taken. The figures describe a snapshot. Balances move continuously on both sides. A disclosure dated last Tuesday is a statement about last Tuesday.

What actually covered the losses in October 2026

This is the honest contrast, and it is not flattering to reserve pages as a form of reassurance. What made users whole after 29 October was not a reserve ratio. The Guardian reported on 1 November 2026 that Binance used four pots of its own money to buy tokens covering the losses:

The BBC reported on 30 October that Binance said it had set aside 6 billion dollars. On 31 October, per the BBC and Reuters, Binance said it had replenished 90 per cent of the losses, with the remaining 10 per cent in less liquid tokens. The composition of a loss matters as much as its size, and the same compilation shows why: CNBC reported as at 30 October that of the assets taken, about 3 billion dollars were stablecoins frozen by issuers and partners, about 1.5 billion dollars were bitcoin that could not be frozen, and about 1.8 billion dollars were other assets remaining with the attackers. An asset that can be frozen by its issuer behaves differently from one that cannot.

On the operational side, The New York Times and CNBC reported that Binance halted trades and suspended withdrawals on 29 October, and The Guardian reported on 1 November that withdrawals resumed, starting with Ethereum, USDT, USDC and some tokens on Binance’s own chain.

None of that is in a reserve disclosure. It is balance-sheet capacity and corporate decisions, and it is what determined the outcome.

A reading checklist

1. Find the date the venue assigned to the figures. If the page does not carry one, you do not know what moment you are looking at.
2. Look for per-asset ratios, not one headline number. A single site-wide figure hides the asset-by-asset picture, and the asset-by-asset picture is the only thing a ratio can honestly describe.
3. Write down the date you read it. Keep it separate from the venue’s own date. We do this on our pages and it is the single habit that keeps a quoted figure from silently ageing.
4. Note what the page is silent on. It is silent on unreported liabilities, and it stops being a current statement the moment after it was taken.

What we could not confirm

• Whether Binance’s proof of reserves was published, and what it contained. The only sourced fact as at our reading on 1 November 2026 is that the BBC reported it was intended for 2 November 2026.
• Any reserve figure for any venue beyond what we recorded on our own OKX page. We are not auditors and we have not verified any venue’s holdings or liabilities ourselves.
• How the incident occurred or who was responsible. The compiled account carries reporting on this; we have not assessed it and this page does not rest on it.

Education only, not financial advice. Trading carries a risk of loss.