South Africa’s largest crypto investment app, Luno, enhances transparency with monthly proof of reserves reports. Through this process, Luno ensures that each customer’s assets are maintained on a 1:1 ratio on their platform, illustrating that customer-stored digital assets match with the balances in their Luno wallets. An enhanced proof of reserves report, incorporating Merkle Tree verification, is being provided by leading international audit, tax and advisory firm Moore Johannesburg and will be published monthly. Customers will now experience greater transparency regarding their investments with these regular, detailed reports.
Proof of reserves illustrate that Luno customer assets are fully collateralised and not used for any other purpose. All cryptocurrency held on the platform by a Luno customer is under secure custodianship with Luno.
Christo de Wit, Luno’s SA country manager says, “There is currently no legal or regulatory obligation to publish proof of reserve reports, but we believe it is an important step to build trust in the crypto space. Luno’s twelve million customers can rest assured that their wallets do contain the crypto stated. This new report is an external validation of our claim that Luno is a safe platform to buy and store crypto. It independently verifies that the cryptocurrency we have on hand for each customer exists with a 1:1 backing across all digital assets and it remains untouched.”
Luno recently received an A-grade rating in CCData’s Exchange Benchmark. The report ranks the risk associated with digital asset exchanges utilising over 200 qualitative and quantitative metrics, covering more than 150 exchanges across eight categories of evaluation.
Dale Russell, director of Blockchain and Digital Assets at Moore Johannesburg, adds, “Utilising the Merkle Tree method for generating proof of reserve reports is considered the industry’s gold standard of verification. Our Moore-powered platform enhances transparency, credibility, and trust between platforms and their users. Large amounts of data are consolidated in a privacy-friendly and tamper-proof manner, so individual data points can be verified while ensuring that personal information remains confidential.”
Customers can log into the Luno account via the website (not mobile app) to verify that their crypto investments are as stated, using the Merkle Tree tool. Luno also publishes a monthly proof of reserves report at www.luno.com/en/proof-of-.
Says de Wit, “Luno is committed to doing everything possible to be transparent and ensure peace of mind in line with our goal to make crypto secure.”
More information about Proof of Reserves
Proof of Reserves is a method to ensure and demonstrate that an exchange holds sufficient digital assets to collateralise the balances it holds on behalf of customers. By constructing a Merkle Tree from the complete list of user account balances, Moore offers a privacy-centric method for users to independently perform a reserves assessment. This feature empowers users, allowing them to personally ensure that the platform has accurately represented their account in the Proof of Reserves assessment conducted by Moore Johannesburg.
About Luno
Luno is a leading global cryptocurrency investment app on a mission to put the power of crypto in everyone’s hands. Since its founding in 2013, Luno has become a leader in responsible crypto education and investment, introducing over 12 million people to crypto. It is available in more than 40 countries across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.
In 2023, Luno was re-certified ISO27001 compliant with no recommendations. The global certification confirms security controls in place across all areas of the business. In addition, Luno received an A-grade rating in CCData’s Exchange Benchmark in November 2023, which ranks the risk associated with digital asset exchanges. Luno publishes an independently verified proof of reserve report monthly.
Luno offers products and services that make it safe and easy to buy, store and learn about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
