Lee Jung-hoon, the former chair of the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb, was found not guilty on Jan. 3 by the 34th Division of the Criminal Agreement of the Seoul Central District Court.

The vice president of Vident, the biggest shareholder in the cryptocurrency exchange “Bithumb,” has been discovered dead. The prosecution was looking into allegations that the executive had stolen money from Bithumb affiliates. The local media reported this.

Since the collapse of FTX, once the second-largest exchange by trading volume, the crypto landscape has fundamentally changed, and it should come as no surprise to many that Binance has emerged as the big winner from the situation. Vetle Lunde, senior analyst at Arcane Research has published a detailed analysis of this.

Data transparency has been a focal point for the crypto industry, but the FTX fiasco has shown that centralized exchanges (CEX) are not transparent enough. So far, crypto analytics firms are apparently not capable of tracking transactions to prevent collapses like FTX.

Before the rise of centralized exchanges (CEXs), over-the-counter (OTC) trading was the go-to method to buy or sell cryptocurrency for many crypto investors. The FTX collapse could trigger a bigger demand for crypto OTC services as investors are looking for alternative methods to convert from and to fiat due to weaker trust in CEXs.

The trust of users on CEXs has so worn out that withdrawals are made at an unprecedented level. In order to retain users and funds, CEXs released proof of reserve to prove innocence.

The CEO of Binance, CZ, agreed with Vitalik Buterin that Centralized Exchanges (CEXes) needed to produce public evidence showing user safety. Of course, CZ had initially pushed the Proof-of-Reserves idea in response to the <a href="https://ambcrypto.com/ftt-collapse-post-mortem-how-ftx-was-led-by-kids-with-no-experience/" target="_blank">calamity</a> that befell FTX users, with several exchanges adopting the model.