Binance announced the January 16 the launch of a settlement platform that will allow institutional users to access exchange services while storing funds off of the exchange.
The new service, called Binance Mirror, will be available to institutional users who lock their assets in the Binance Custody cold storage service.
Those users will be able to “double” their custodial account balance on their exchange account. They will then be able to use the duplicated funds with Binance’s various trading and investment products, including VIP loans.
Binance has offered its custody service since 2021. Athena Yu, VP of Binance Custody, commented on how the platform has developed since then. She said:
We spent much of the past year refining [Binance Custody’s] operations to help our clients unlock the liquidity of their assets held in our cold storage… [We] I can’t wait to introduce our upcoming new features that will further elevate the functionality of Binance Mirror.
Although Binance Mirror was not officially introduced until today, it appears that Binance has been offering the service for some time. The company said that mirrored assets currently account for 60% of all assets on its custody platform. It also said that reflected assets from custody to exchange accounts increased by 67% during the last quarter of 2022.
Binance did not disclose how much is stored in its escrow or mirror program. The company’s recent proof of reserves statement suggests that it holds $69 billion in cryptocurrency, though it’s not clear that the statement account of all your funds.
Although Binance Custody is not useful for retail users, it is of interest to institutional users who must store funds with qualified institutions according to certain security standards.
Other notable providers of institutional custody include BitGo, Coinbase Custody, Bakkt, Gemini, Loyalty digital assetsY nasdaq.
