Recently, information appeared showing that Binance was ambiguous in Mint and burning ETH Staking Token WBETH and BETH. This has been causing a lot of controversy in the community.
WBETH ( Wrapped Beacon ETH) is an upgraded version of BETH, a form of wrapped Token used to replace ETH when users participate in Staking ETH through Binance. WBETH was launched by Binance in April 2023. Since then, the exchange has Mint new Token WBETH and burned old Token BETH.
Normally, to be fair, Mint and burning must go together with equal value. However, the most recent time, Binance did not do so.
on-chain data shows that a total of 318,180 WBETH were newly Mint by Binance over the past two weekends, Chia into 5 batches, valued at more than 500 million USD. This number corresponds to 50% of the total supply of BETH.
These Token were then transferred to a wallet address labeled “Binance 6” – this is a Cold Storage that the exchange uses to store user assets.
However, some time later, Binance still did not burn a similar amount of BETH until it was "subtly reminded" by Conor Grogan, Director of Product and Sales of Coinbase.
Binance explained in a post that these transactions are part of their previously announced action to gradually convert BETH to WBETH, as mentioned.
However, such a significant time difference can create conditions for other ambiguous actions. This has sparked many controversies.
In fact, this is not the first time Binance has caused controversy over Token minting and burning rates. After this discovery emerged, the online community recalled the 2020 event, when the exchange pre-released 100 million BETH when implementing Binance Smart Chain. This amount of Token was equivalent to 85% of the ETH supply at the time. However, until 2022, Binance will burn 98.5% of the issued BETH to accurately reflect the amount of ETH that has been wrapped to BSC.
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