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Binance says banking partner will stop processing SWIFT transfers under $100K
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- monero-xmr 4y agoPeople use crypto to make payments. I know because I invested in a European company that pays a lot of Argentinian developers in USDT. Further removing the link between crypto and traditional payment rails just makes a true circular crypto economy more likely. You don’t need SWIFT once everyone accepts crypto.
- MuffinFlavored 4y agoYou need SWIFT to get into and out of crypto, right? aka bank -> exchange/crypto (in/purchase) then sell crypto on exchange, transfer to bank
- dannyw 4y agoNot if your landlord accepts crypto, also there's heaps of exchangers everywhere in Argentina.
- noman-land 4y agoNo you do not. You can get into crypto by selling things or working for it. And can get out of crypto by buying things or hiring people with it.
- polygamous_bat 4y agoAt some point in the chain, people need to get out of it. You buy food from grocery store who buys it from wholesaler who buys it from farmers, who could all be spread around the world. How is that feasible without worldwide adoption of USDT?
- wongarsu 4y agoAt small scale, you can meet up with someone at the coffee shop, you transfer the USDT, he hands you USD bills (this has been a real thing for a while). At large scale you can have large distributors that buy your USDT at an agreed price, and then sell it on either to other large companies or to a distribution network to the people who will at some point buy stuff from you for USDT. In the end it's a circular economy in a way, for anyone cashing out USDT there is someone cashing in (assuming the price stays constant). Right now we match them up with marketplaces and SWIFT transfers, but people running around with suitcases of cash would work just as well.
- skohan 4y agoSurely you would agree that having crypto wired into the banking system inspires more confidence than “I give you a briefcase full of cash and you give me an entry in a ledger” You have to have an awful lot of trust that this briefcase full of cash will be available to train back should you ever want it again.
- loveparade 4y agoThat's a matter of adoption. These things move very slowly. If you look at the adoption of debit cards, it looks similar. They were first released in the 1960s, and most retailers fought against them and said they would never accept them. A few years ago there were valid technical reasons for why crypto is not being adopted by retailers in the form of slow transactions throughput and high fees. Nobody wants to wait a minute and spend $10 for their transaction to go through. These technical reasons no longer exist. L2s are extremely fast, secured by L1, and fees are small. And with the upcoming sharding upgrade Ethereum is going to be even more efficient. From a technical perspective, you could now accept USDT (or any other token) and have verification be about as fast as most card payments, with lower fees. But all of these are relatively recent developments (~1-2 years), and it will likely take a few years before all this technology trickles down into real-world adoption.
- threeseed 4y agoThe reason retailers don't like crypto is because: a) It is too volatile. b) Consumers are not demanding it. Not sure what the magical solution to either is that hasn't been tried before.
- 8note 4y agoUSDT's selling factor is that it's convertible to USD, no? The interesting thing I think is what happens to those USDT after the payment?
- monero-xmr 4y agoI’m less familiar with Argentina than other countries. I know in Lebanon a lot of money changers will take crypto (Bitcoin / USDT primarily) and give you paper currency. There are a lot of money changers who earn a living this way. Very likely the same in Argentina.
- HNArg024 4y agoYep, pretty much the same here in Argentina. People are only now getting used to digital money (I don't mean cripto, I mean thinks like PayPal). Except for some places in Buenos Aires or online shops that sell contraband tech, you don't see widespread use of crypto. For us it's just a proxy for USD. Our currency is a joke (95% anual inflation) and we can only buy legally 200 USD month, so crypto is our way out.
- 56friends 4y agoDo you call that "a true circular crypto economy"? Selling USDT to some shady changers on a grey market in Lebanon?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fijiaarone 4y agoNo street exchanger is going to take your cryptocurrency and give you money if they can’t get money back out of it.
- monero-xmr 4y agoThey typically send the crypto to a coworker in another country who cashes it out. Crypto has no borders
- netsharc 4y agoAre there a lot of Argentinian food stores that accept crypto? At the end of the chain, people need money to buy food to eat. Or are there "black market" exchanges that would accept a transfer into their digital wallet and pay out cash, so these Argentinians can buy bread?
- HNArg024 4y agoWe exchange crypto por Pesos in "black markets" and use the pesos to buy the everyday stuff. Larger transactions are almost always in USD (a car, a property), but it's harder to justify the funds. Most people getting paid in crypto aren't declaring any taxes. Even if you do, the limit for the most common method is 1k USD/month
- s1artibartfast 4y agoExactly how it works in these countries. More and more of the economy is flowing through Black Market crypto dealers located in neighborhoods. The government takes a 50% tax on foreign cash coming in to convert to local currency, and once you do it you have to deal with 50% inflation. As a result there are black market crypto Banks. Someone will convert crypto for pesos to buy groceries at the crypto bank. The grocery store takes the peso they get and puts it back in the crypto Bank. Nobody wants hold the pesos any real time because it is a losing proposition. To put it in perspective, prior to crypto, people would take their entire paycheck and savings and immediately buy pallets of bricks for the same purpose. They would fill their houses and yards with these bricks because they held value better than the currency, even after accounting for the cost of trucking them around
- mrjin 4y agoI would expect the opposite. Argentinians do that coz Argentinian banks cannot be trusted(they learnt it from banks forced converting foreign currencies held in their acounts). But still, they will need to convert back to peso so that they can buy groceries etc.. Cutting the link will not make everyone accept crypto but leave it as none wants something cannot be freely converted if they have a choice. I guess the next move would be opening offshore accounts to accept payments.
- redox99 4y agoIf an Argentinian receives a SWIFT transfer of let's say 10k USD, it is forcefully converted to pesos at an absurdly bad, effectively asymmetrical exchange rate, basically less than 50% of the real value. In other words, if you try to buy dollars with the pesos that were converted for you, you will only be able to buy less than 5k USD. And that's before taking taxes into account. When taking taxes into account, somebody who is paid 10k will basically end up with 3k USD, probably less. Additionally, and this happens in every country, SWIFT takes days and fees are really expensive. Crypto is almost instant and fees much much lower.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wongarsu 4y agoOn the other hand, supermarkets don't accept USDT or Bitcoin because there's little benefit: it's easier to have their customers convert it to peso first. But if the conversion becomes more difficult, then a shop accepting crypto is now more attractive to those that have it. Of course that only works if the whole crypto hassle is still better than working with local banks.
- xii23 4y ago> Argentinians do that coz Argentinian banks cannot be trusted Incorrect. Argentinians do that because taxes are incredibly high, and if you earn in USD you must sell it at the official dollar rate (less than half of the real rate), and you can't even buy the dollars you sold back because there's a cap on how much USD you can buy per month (I think it's 200USD). Argentinian devs LOVE crypto because they love evading taxes (justifiably or not)
- throwaway290 4y ago> pays a lot of Argentinian developers in USDT And what do those developers pay for in USDT? It's Argentina. Read about its economy. To use it as an example is somewhat disingenuous. The government rations foreign currency in something like a few hundred USD per month per person I think. If cryptocurrency is another way to work around legal inconveniences, so what.
- xwolfi 4y agoOh yes, Argentina, where the solution is unregulated crypto. Thank god swift is irrelevant to crypto because that's the core issue here.
- monero-xmr 4y agoWell the solution certainly doesn’t involve the government considering a century of destructive policies
- lern_too_spel 4y agoYour problem is failing to understand that the Argentinian government can regulate crypto just as it regulates USD.
- monero-xmr 4y agoAll real estate in Argentina is sold via USD as hundred dollar notes in a brief case. Entire businesses exist to facilitate these transactions. I don’t think you understand what a basket case this country and its government is.
- notch656c 4y agoI'm always baffled by people that think the way that laws are written must be the way things operate. Taxes in BA are above 100% of profits. On paper it's illegal to make money. Yet businesses exist. Some peoples' minds may explode.
- lern_too_spel 4y agoAnd I'm always baffled by people who fail to understand arguments. If a country can't regulate currency, USD is far superior to crypto. If a country can, neither works.
- int_19h 4y agoThe reason why they can enforce the regulations on USD is because you're either bringing physical cash across the border - which can then be intercepted by the customs - or you're doing a wire transfer to some local bank, which said bank will then duly report to the government. They can certainly pass equivalent regulations on BTC. Good luck enforcing them, though.
- homeland221 4y agoArgentina only. I worked in super multi congloromerates HR. USD is near 100%. We avoided South America because unstability and persistent high inflation. We do have other South American working in different regions (yes, including those from IT/AI you name it). They all being paid with USD or their residence currency. When I was in another company, small one, we did paid with baseball cards too (I doubt anyone willing to consider that as usual payments)
- elkos 4y agoBaseball cards? You really need to do a write up about it this sounds pretty interesting.
- throw123123123 4y agoIf argentinian developers are reading this, you are probably better off making a bank account in the US than using crypto. Please refrain from transferring large amounts to local crypto companies, as those transfers are tracked and can be used against you in the future.
- throw123123123 4y agoWhich company is this?
- trompetenaccoun 4y agoThe reason Argentinians want to get paid in this and not their local currency is economic instability and high inflation in Argentina. You don't want to be holding Pesos, it's madness. The situation is similarly dire in quite a few other countries. Turkey, Venezuela, Iran, Lebanon,... I'm not sure about Argentina specifically but from most of these cases I know personally they don't even use Binance for conversion, there are local money changers that trade hard currency for depreciating (t)rash, this was true even before Bitcoin & co when people still kept paper dollars under their mattress or in the bank. Those who think this will go away with regulation and bans are even more delusional than the folks who thought that alcohol or drugs can simply be banned and all will be fine. Financial security is a basic need, it's part of our drive for survival. Binance is mostly used by speculators/retail traders, not people who actually use cryptocurrencies. I get the joke that Bitcoin people say everything's good for Bitcoin, but in this case it may actually be true. Binance isn't a good company and people have been concerned about their huge market share in exchanges for a long time. Binance isn't pro Bitcoin, Ethereum and other such networks. They heavily push their own coins and solutions which aren't decentralized. It's only slightly better for the ecosystem then FTX probably, in the sense that they're not outright stealing user funds - at least that we know of.
- dogma1138 4y agoI’m sure tax avoidance if not full on evasion has nothing to do with it…
- baby 4y agoWhy isn’t Binance looking to become a bank? It’d make more sense imo for Binance to operate as a bank with both a crypto backbone and a tradfi backbone
- mrjin 4y agoHell no. Becoming a bank means being heavily regulated, which is obviously not good for their biz.
- skissane 4y agoWhat if they bought a bank? If you have a bank as a subsidiary, obviously the subsidiary is heavily regulated-but is the same true for the non-bank parent company?
- blibble 4y agothe change in control will trigger all sorts of regulatory interventions
- paraselene_ 4y agoDidn't FTX do something similiar in the US?
- coffeebeqn 4y agoThey bought a tiny bank in WA and like 10x’d their deposits overnight. I think they were going to use it for some kind of money laundering or some other scheme
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- binkHN 4y agoBanks have rules; crypto has none.
- Aeolun 4y agoWhat is the logic behind this? How can a bank just refuse to transfer?
- jbverschoor 4y agoAML expenditure.
- dannyw 4y agoBanks can do whatever they want. It's pretty annoying for people doing legal-but-controversial things, whether you're selling adult content, weed, or WikiLeaks.
- kube-system 4y agoExcept for weed, which is not legal under US law.
- trompetenaccoun 4y agoIt is locally. Also such bizarre situations don't only exist in the US, the Netherlands come to mind as another weird example where it's both legalized and at the same time isn't. And the shop owners also have banking problems: https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2021/10/abn-raises-charges-for-coffeeshops-by-1000-to-cover-money-laundering-costs/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2021/10/abn-raises-charges-for... Mind you, that's coming from a bank with a history in slave trading only a few generations ago. I find such cases to be almost advertisements for decentralized people-owned banking. Those who control our money control society and almost everything we can or can't do.
- kube-system 4y agoAll US localities are subject to federal law. Federal law enforcement is not currently enforcing the law in some situations, but the law remains on the books and still is enforced in many situations.
- jbverschoor 4y agoCould be because they have to spend too much time on AML for each transaction. Could also be that binanceis in trouble, and wants to prevent a bank run by the majority/mass.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- xwolfi 4y agoBinance is not in trouble in Lithuania where it's headquartered. But Signature Bank, in the US, most certainly is.
- jbverschoor 4y agoI don't understand, but it feels like you're saying that Signature Bank wants to prevent a __bankrun on Signature Bank__ through Binance? What other trouble would there be?
- VagueMag 4y agoAdded context from Bloomberg (paywalled): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-22/binance-says-signature-sets-transaction-minimum-amid-pullback https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-22/binance-s...
- ourmandave 4y agohttps://archive.is/Zk32R https://archive.is/Zk32R
- kakapo88 4y agoI wonder about that $100k limit. Why would there be that special case?
- OhNoNotAnother1 4y agoIt's greatly reduces the number of people who can withdraw, that's all.
- layer8 4y agoSo that drug lords can still do business I guess. ;)
- olalonde 4y agoAn unintended consequence of AML regulation: making operating an honest business more difficult and forcing them into become more shady operations or be outcompeted by those who do. Same problem faced by Tether.
- Jweb_Guru 4y agoBinance is by no means an "honest business," and never has been. Nobody even knows where they're incorporated.
- olalonde 4y agoMy point... They would never have become that big otherwise. Same for Tether.
- xwolfi 4y agoLithuania, it's now called Bifinity UAB after changing their name from Binance UAB. They file regulatory documents from their address in Vilnius
- Jweb_Guru 4y agoThat's not the main Binance organization. They have various silos (like Bifinity and Binance USA) that are registered and claim to be siloed from the other organization, but even a little bit of research makes it clear that they're not actually separate organizations. Binance US is under investigation for things like KYC/AML avoidance and money laundering... And as for Bifinity, please read https://www.reuters.com/technology/binances-books-are-black-box-filings-show-crypto-giant-tries-rally-confidence-2022-12-19/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/binances-books-are-black-.... One relevant part: > Bifinity, whose annual report said it has 147 employees, does not have a website or publicly provide any contact details. The company's chief executive, Saulius Galatiltis, did not respond to requests for comment. At its registered address at a business centre in Lithuania's capital Vilnius, Bifinity is not listed on the tenants' board. This is not the first time a Binance organization has claimed to be filing from / regulated in a particular country or location, but when anyone actually tries to look into it there's nobody there or the registration was withdrawn.
- rippercushions 4y agoLet me get this straight: the world's largest Bitcoin exchange just announced that they will no longer allow retail customers to withdraw cash, and you're telling us, with a straight face, that this is good for Bitcoin?
- Gigachad 4y agoThese comments make more sense when you realise that bitcoin is more of a religion and way of life than a technology. Nothing can ever be bad for bitcoin because it’s an accepted fact of life that bitcoin _is_ the future.
- WFHRenaissance 4y agoYou can say the same about fiat too.
- xwolfi 4y agoJust calling money fiat is like calling people "infidel" :D
- dgellow 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money
- rchaud 4y agoBitcoin maximalism has immediate parallels to religious doctrine that regular currencies do not. 1) Divine creator whose existence is impossible to prove 2) A holy book: (whitepaper) that's taken as absolute truth and therefore doesn't require any revisions or updates. Proposed changes to core beliefs create split factions (BTC v BCH, Old v New Testament, or the Shia-Sunni split in Islam). 3) Monotheism: Belief in the primacy of Bitcoin blockchain over all other competing chains, and warning of divine punishment for apostates (NGMI).
- mattdesl 4y agoA lot of users depend on CEX withdrawals to pay crypto income and capital gains taxes. This is where regulation should step in: citizens should have a legally protected right to withdraw their crypto to fiat, if nothing else than to pay their taxes.
- wmf 4y agoOr more generally, banking neutrality. But only for legal businesses of course.
- helsinkiandrew 4y agoMore details on Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-22/binance-says-signature-sets-transaction-minimum-amid-pullback https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-22/binance-s... This is part of Signatures plan to reduce crypto deposit exposure: https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2022/signature-bank-tries-to-distance-itself-from-crypto/amp/ https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2022/signature-bank-tr...