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Easy. As an exchange almost all your volume is “off chain” transactions between two traders. And since you aren’t audited or beholden to any financial regulat
by spookthesunset 8y ago
Easy. As an exchange almost all your volume is “off chain” transactions between two traders. And since you aren’t audited or beholden to any financial regulation there is nothing stopping you from having one side of the trade be your own bot. All that bot does is sell newly created fake bitcoin and keeps the dirty USD fiat for the exchange owner. Again since the system isn’t audited, the exchange can have massively more “bitcoin” in its database than it actually has on the blockchain. The system (Er, scam) can work just fine until a bunch of folks start withdrawing bitcoin.
Since virtually all of the exchanges are unaudited, sketchy “businesses” I wouldn’t be surprised if they all run this way. It might come to pass the almost all of the exchange volume consists of trading fake bitcoin that is backed by almost no real bitcoin.
- DoctorOetker 8y agosure but these "off chain" transactions are not really Bitcoin, but the exchange's promises of Bitcoin (or whatever cryptocurrency under discussion). As long as custommers succeed in end-to-end conversion the distinction is moot, until they fail to succeed in this end-to-end conversion. So still a commercial bank can not fractional reserve bank BTC, only fractional reserve bank promises for BTC. For a while people may fall for such a scheme but players learn...