Indian Crypto Exchange Giottus Says It Will Provide Proof of Reserves, While Rivals Remain Silent

Giottus, a lesser-known Indian cryptocurrency exchange but still among the top 10 in the country, says it will provide customers with proof of reserves, even as the rest of India's cryptocurrency exchange industry remains silent on the matter for now.

India's most prominent crypto trading platforms either declined to comment or didn't respond to requests for comments when asked if they would publicly publish their fund reserves or do a "Merkle tree" proof of reserves.

CoinDesk reached out to seven of the largest platforms in India. The most prominent of them – CoinDCX, CoinSwitch Kuber and WazirX – declined to comment, while ZebPay, BitBNS and BuyUCoin didn’t respond.

Read More: Crypto Exchanges Scramble to Compile 'Proof of Reserves' as FTX Contagion Grips Markets

Only Giottus confirmed that it plans to provide proof of reserves.

“We are working on it. As a matter of fact, it's high time, we all did,” Vikram Subburaj, Giottus' co-founder and CEO, said. “We should have something within the next three months. This is also an ideal point for regulators to start looking at providing proof of reserves from exchanges as part of their filings.”

Giottus' trading volume over the past 24 hours was $51 million, according to CoinMarketCap.

The Bharat Web3 Association, the Indian industry’s newly formed advocacy body, declined to comment.

The Merkle tree proof of reserves, named after its inventor Ralph Merkle, is a cryptographic tool at the heart of all blockchain technology. It’s a cryptographic data structure that maintains privacy, but allows users to verify the stability of their holdings on exchanges, thereby creating trust.

The Merkle tree proof of reserves has become central to the crypto eco system’s conversation in the wake of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao’s tweet that urged industry players to provide “proof of reserves” after his exchange agreed to acquire the beleaguered FTX but reversed course after looking at FTX's books.

Shortly after Zhao's tweet, ​​nine exchanges – Binance, Gate.io, KuCoin, Poloniex, Bitget, Huobi, OKX, Deribit and Bybit– separately issued statements that they will publish their Merkle tree reserve certificates to increase transparency.

Binance released a list of its cold wallet and reserves amounting to around $69 billion, based on current market prices, on Thursday. The company also said it will share its Merkle tree proof of funds in the coming weeks.