This is the kind of bullshit centralized exchanges are using in their "proof of reserves", "safu funds", "insurance funds", "collateral funds", "1-to-1 matching reports", and all the other trash they peddle to convince you your funds are totally safe. Literal random number generators. They will do and say anything to get you to hand over your coins to them. Don't fall it.
I'm not surprised with this development, centralized services will do anything to look trustworthy in the eyes of their customers but we know all they're doing is just marketing and don't actually care about their customers. Proof of reserve my foot, the only time I'll believe a centralized exchange has a proof of reserve is when their reserve/insurance fund are in Bitcoin and held in a multisign offline wallet which they'll sign a message including the Bitcoin address which can be verified by everyone and we monitor the address constantly.
Without that anything they say isn't worth believing. Moreover why would they hold insurance funds in their native token. Obviously they're doing so for them to easily manipulate the price (of funds said to be in reserved). No centralized exchange should be trusted irrespective of how big they're. They're here to make money and they'll lie, deceive everyone until they finally get exposed and exit scam just as FTX did.
For newbies that'll come across this thread, if you still have coins on exchanges, get them off right away. Exchanges aren't wallet to store your coins with them and don't believe whatever excuse they'll give to make you believe they'll look after your coins. Take the security of your coins as your personal business and store them offline in a hardware wallet.
I agree with you. Proof of reserves is a good step, but it's not enough to guarantee that a centralized exchange is safe. There are other things to consider, like the people who run the exchange, how they do business, and how much money they have.
I'm also worried that many centralized exchanges keep their insurance funds in their own tokens. This is a conflict of interest, because it gives the exchange an incentive to manipulate the price of its token.