Mazars Group suspends all work with crypto clients including Binance, Crypto.com, citing concerns over public perception of proof of reserves

Published

3 years ago

December 16, 2022

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Accounting firm Mazars Group has suspended all work with its crypto clients. The decision to cut ties with Binance, KuCoin and Crypto.com comes just after the global accounting firm released “proof of reserve” reports for several digital asset exchanges.

The move comes as major cryptocurrency exchanges look to prove their solvency, and show they have enough money to cover customer withdrawals. The CEOs of Binance and Crypto.com have looked to distinguish their own business practices from what happened at FTX, which has been charged with illegally using customer deposits for years before filing for bankruptcy. Its founder Sam Bankman-Fried is facing multiple counts of fraud and money laundering.

Mazars fired the Trump Organization as a client in February, citing a lack of reliability in the organization’s financial statements.

Mazars Group said in a statement to CNBC that it had “paused its activity relating to the provision of Proof of Reserves Reports for entities in the cryptocurrency sector due to concerns regarding the way these reports are understood by the public.”

The statement added that Mazars’ proof of reserves reports are “performed in accordance with Reporting Standards relevant to an Agreed Upon Procedures report.”

“They do not constitute either an assurance or an audit opinion on subject matter. Instead they report limited findings based on the agreed procedures performed on the subject matter at a historical point in time,” the statement continued.

A spokesperson from Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, told CNBC in a statement that, “Mazars has indicated that they will temporarily pause their work with all of their crypto clients globally, which include Crypto.com, KuCoin, and Binance.”

“Unfortunately, this means that we will not be able to work with Mazars for the moment,” Binance said.

Both bitcoin and Binance’s BNB token took a dip on the news, with bitcoin initially dropping nearly 3% and Binance’s native token falling nearly 5.5%.

Mazars’ South African branch published a five-page “proof of reserves” for Binance on Dec. 7, but the report is no longer available on the firm’s website as of Friday morning. Unlike standard audits, the “proof of reserves” for Binance only accounted for bitcoin. The report did not show liabilities for Binance’s lending arm. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has often said that the company itself has no debt.

On Dec. 9, Crypto.com published a proof of reserves audited by Mazars, attesting that customer assets were held on a one-to-one basis, meaning that all deposits were 100% backed by Crypto.com‘s reserves. A spokesperson for the exchange reiterated that the firm had “successfully” completed its recent proof of reserves in collaboration with Mazars and that the accounting company had “provided independent verification of our secure on-chain digital assets matching our customer balances 1:1.”

Crypto.com added that customers can verify their balance on its website. A spokesperson said the company will “continue to engage with reputable audit firms in 2023 and beyond” as they “seek to increase transparency across the entire industry.”

KuCoin said its proof of reserve report was already delivered by Mazars . “In the future, we are open to work with any leading and reputable audit to provide the third-party verification report,” a KuoCoin spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, and KPMG — collectively dubbed accounting’s Big Four — haven’t made moves to drop their crypto clients. Coinbase, for example, is a client of Deloitte. Tether uses Moore Cayman.

The Big Four did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday, Zhao said Binance is working with auditing firms, though he didn’t name which ones. He added that “interestingly, many audit firms are kind of scared to work with crypto businesses.”

“There are a few audit firms that audited FTX and they got burned because they give the stamp of approval, and I don’t know how they did the audits. But audits don’t reveal every problem,” continued Zhao, noting that many of those firms “don’t know how” to audit crypto changes.

“They don’t know how to audit user assets, different blockchains,” he said.

This news is developing. Please check back for updates.

Environment

Elon Musk’s Tesla launches bid to supply electricity to British households

Published

2 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Elon Musk's Tesla launches bid to supply electricity to British households

A photo shows the logo on US electric carmaker Tesla’s European headquarters in Amsterdam on May 2, 2025.

Ramon Van Flymen | Afp | Getty Images

Elon Musk’s electric vehicle manufacturer and energy company Tesla is preparing to supply electricity to British households and businesses.

The Texas-based company formally submitted its request for an electricity license to the British energy regulator Ofgem at the end of last month, according to a notice on the watchdog’s website.

If approved, the move could pave the way for Tesla to compete with the big firms that dominate the U.K. energy market from as soon as next year.

The application, first reported by the Sunday Telegraph, came from Tesla Energy Ventures and was signed by Andrew Payne, who runs the firm’s European energy operations.

Tesla, which is best known as one of the world’s leading EV manufacturers, also develops solar energy generation systems and battery energy storage products.

Musk’s company already has an electricity supplier in Texas, called Tesla Electric. The service, which was launched in 2022, allows customers to optimize energy consumption and pays them for selling excess energy back to the grid.

Tesla’s push for a license to supply electricity to British households comes as the company endures a protracted European sales slump.

Data published last week by the U.K.’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) showed Tesla’s new car sales dropped by nearly 60% to 987 units last month, down from 2,462 a year ago.

In Germany, meanwhile, Tesla car sales fell to 1,110 units in July, down 55.1% from the same month in 2024.

The latest sales figures underscored some of the challenges facing the company, which continues to face stiff competition, particularly from Chinese EV manufacturers, and reputational damage from Musk’s incendiary rhetoric and relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.

Environment

Volvo EX30 ducks 147% tariff threat with Ghent production switch

Published

9 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Volvo EX30 ducks 147% tariff threat with Ghent production switch

Volvo gears up EX30 production in Belgium

In a move that helps the brand duck protectionist anti-Chinese tariffs, Volvo Cars has switched production of its award-winning EX30 models destined for US roads from its Zhangjiakou plant in China to the Ghent facility in Belgium.

Volvo EX30 production began in the company’s Ghent factory back in April, but those first cars were earmarked for the Swedish domestic and European export markets, but that move wasn’t primarily motivated by avoiding tariffs. As Electrive reports, the company seemed happy enough to continue importing its small electric crossover from China and accepting the new 28.8% tariffs (up from 10%), but the wait times to get the vehicles shipped in from China was imply too long.

In 2024, Swedish and German buyers had to wait up to eight months for their EX30 in some cases, according to Volvo Cars’ European boss, Arek Nowinski, per Automotive News. Once production in Ghent is fully up to speed, however, wait times should be cut to about 90 days. Those wait times, and the price hike associated with the tariffs, have hurt sales of the originally Chinese-made Volvo EV. In 2024, for example, the EX30 ranked third in European EV sales, but slipped out of the top 10 first half of 2025.

“The car is now being built in Europe, which means faster delivery times,” Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson to Automotive News. “We should return to the sales and market share figures for the EX30 that we had before the introduction of tariffs.”

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Coming to Staying in America

Volvo-EX30-top-selling-EV — Volvo EX30; via Volvo Cars.

The EX30’s switch to Ghent is good news for American fans of the compact, lickety-quick Volvo EV. Now that it’s no longer exclusively made in China, Volvo has decided to give it a stay of execution as it revamps its US product lineup to better align with market trends (read: SUVs) and the changing political landscape (read: tariffs and inflation).

The reason? The Made in China version of the EX30 would virtually unsellable in the US due to the implementation of 147% tariffs on vehicles imported from China. Vehicles imported from Europe, meanwhile, carry just 15% tariffs, keeping the EX30 in a competitive price bracket.

Expect to see both Ghent and South Carolina play an increasingly large role in Volvo’s US product mix – at least for the next three-odd years.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Volvo Cars, Automotive News, via Electrive.

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Environment

BYD is coming with a ridiculous 3,000 hp electric supercar

Published

2 days ago

August 9, 2025

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BYD is coming with a ridiculous 3,000 hp electric supercar

New filings have revealed that BYD is about to release a ridiculous 3,000 hp electric supercar: the Yangwang U9 Track Edition.

BYD already shocked the world when it launched the Yangwang U9, its first all-electric supercar.

It featured four advanced electric motors with a combined power of nearly 1,300 horsepower. The U9 can accelerate from 0 to 62 mph (0 to 100 km/h) in just 2.36 seconds.

With a motor at each wheel and a highly advanced electric-air suspension, the U9 can turn on itself and even jump over potholes.

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But that was only the beginning.

Based on a new filing with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), BYD is preparing to launch a new ‘Track Edition’ of the Yangwang U9:

When an automaker releases a “track” version of a car, it typically primarily features body changes for better aerodynamic performance, adding downforce, and it will also often feature bigger brakes.

The Yangwang U9 ‘Track Edition’ appears to feature all that… and much more.

The filing reveals that BYD updated the motors at each wheel to a new 555 kW motor. That’s a higher-performing motor than in most performance electric vehicles. The U9 Track Edition has four of them for a total of 2,220 kW (3,019 hp).

I would have thought that this was a typo if it wasn’t for the insane electric vehicles coming out of China these days.

Here are a few pictures from the MIIT filing:

There are a lot of performance specs that are not included in the MIIT filing. Therefore, it will be interesting to see when the vehicle is fully unveiled and BYD reveals what kind of performance it can achieve with 3,000 hp packed in 4 electric motors.

Here are a few other features mentioned in the filing:

Standard features: