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Leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has clarified that it only has $15 million worth of deposits on FTX to facilitate business operations and client trades, as it faced a partial outage.

In its bid to provide clarity, the company said regardless of whether the Binance and FTX transaction completes, "we have very little exposure to FTX and we have no exposure to its token, FTT".

"We have no exposure to Alameda Research, and we have no loans to FTX," Coinbase said in a blog post late on Tuesday.

The clarification came as Binance on Tuesday announced a non-binding, letter of intent to acquire FTX for an undisclosed sum. Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said in a tweet thread that FTX asked for their help.

Binance and FTX teams were working on clearing out the withdrawal backlog.

Coinbase further said that as a publicly traded company in the US, "we've also built our business in a way that allows us to be transparent about our track record, balance sheet strength, and effectively and prudently manage risk for our customers and ourselves".

"We are in a strong capital position. We ended Q3 with $5.6 billion in total available $USD resources, including $5 billion in cash and cash equivalents," the company informed.

"Fragmented, opaque regulatory frameworks in the US are driving crypto to offshore unregulated exchanges, where looser regulations can put customers at risk," it said.

Meanwhile, Coinbase said it was monitoring a fix for a partial outage that affected its website and app for around two hours.