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Only SWIFT USD transfers are suspended. ACH are still allowed which is what most US users use and Euro SEPA are still ok which what all of EU uses. Other countr

Only SWIFT USD transfers are suspended. ACH are still allowed which is what most US users use and Euro SEPA are still ok which what all of EU uses. Other countries uses their own currencies. So this only affects a small portion of 0.01% of their userbase.

lazide 4y ago
So no wires? Anyone moving significant money (> $50-100k) is almost certainly going to want to use a wire.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  0.01% of user base != 0.01% of withdrawal volume.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Good point. Also != balance or percent of assets. My guess is wires in USD are very highly correlated with high percentage of total held assets accounts (aka whales).
- gruez 4y ago
  Is there a reason why wires (presumably SWIFT transfers) would be preferable to ACH?
  - runeks 4y ago
    They’re international
    - lxgr 4y ago
      Depending on how you look at it, either both wire transfers and ACH, or neither are international. Both are transactions between US financial institutions, but can be used as the first or last leg of an international transfer (SWIFT or otherwise) through correspondent banking.
  - lazide 4y ago
    1) ACH transactions are potentially refundable/reversable for quite a long period of time. I think the official period is only 30 days, but it's not unheard of for ACH transactions to be approved a year+ later. Wires are (generally) not reversible, and doing so requires intervention of someone manually at the Fed. 2) ACH transactions are 'pull' by their nature. ACH stands for Automated Clearing House, and it was created for checks. Unless denied by the bank being pulled from, all someone needs to withdraw or deposit funds in an account is the routing number and account number. If someone is playing games, that really doesn't require anything. Someone could print checks with that info and just start writing them, for instance, until they get arrested. Wires are send only, direct bank to bank (through the Fed), and are heavily controlled by the banks. 3) Send/Receive limits for ACH (because these are checks) can be arbitrarily low, at the banks discretion. It's not uncommon for it to be $100k/$250k or lower to help limit fraud, and often automated. Wire limits (if any) can be very high, and are generally more a matter of bank policy around authentication, and it's not that unusual for 8 or 9 digit wires to be happening regularly without problems. If someone is going to be liquidating $10 mln in something, 99.99% of the time it will be handled via wire.
    - lxgr 4y ago
      > ACH transactions are 'pull' by their nature. Besides ACH debit, there's also ACH credit transfers, which are "push" payments. I'd assume that this would be what a crypto exchange would use to pay out customer funds.
      - lazide 4y ago
        Thanks, yes. Pull/push, not enter/accept is perhaps a clearer way to put it. A separate party (not you) initiates the actual transaction, then the bank either accepts it or doesn’t.
        lxgr 4y ago
        To a bank customer, that‘s not different from an incoming wire transfer though, right?
- pedalpete 4y ago
  I think we'd need to look at the use case for this, and the apparently short time that this will be out of service at binance. If it's a few days, and I need to move money 1) They've given a heads up so I have time to move it before if needed 2) Assuming my money is in crypto, I can easily move it elsewhere This isn't to say this isn't strange, and suspect, but the impact seems to be limited. At the same time, if I were to have a binance account, I'd make sure I also have an account on another exchange.
Ayesh 4y ago
> So this only affects a small portion of 0.01% of their userbase. I feel like this is definitely a lot more than that. Local banks in many countries, along with many online banks allow USD wire transfers that do not get converted. In countries like Sri Lanka, where the local currency is rapidly depreciating, many people actually never withdraw funds to local currency accounts to protect against this.
- patrickaljord 4y ago
  I doubt these kinds of countries represent more than 0.01% of users. Sure sucks for these tho they could use other exchanges to cash out or local OTCs.
  - jrumbut 4y ago
    It's funny to hear someone say the quiet part loud. Wasn't servicing exactly those customers (people without recourse to stable currencies and the international banking system) always the answer to "what do crytocurrencies do well besides speculation and crime?"
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      What’s the quiet part? It’s sort of helping some people, mostly as a side effect, and not particularly well, all while generating massive negative externalities for everyone else.
      - notahacker 4y ago
        I think he means "the quiet part" because cryptoenthusiasts were very loud about the idea of 'uncensorable' financial inclusion for the developing world being a major use case until it was "does it matter? they're a tiny fraction of users anyway". If there were many people in the developing world countries whose currencies Binance doesn't support using the service, I suspect they relied on wire transfers in USD....
KptMarchewa 4y ago
The message is pretty crafted and has to mean 0.01% of users did use SWIFT in the last month vs at all.

lazide 4y ago

So no wires? Anyone moving significant money (> $50-100k) is almost certainly going to want to use a wire.

Scoundreller 4y ago
0.01% of user base != 0.01% of withdrawal volume.
- lazide 4y ago
  Good point. Also != balance or percent of assets. My guess is wires in USD are very highly correlated with high percentage of total held assets accounts (aka whales).
gruez 4y ago
Is there a reason why wires (presumably SWIFT transfers) would be preferable to ACH?
- runeks 4y ago
  They’re international
  - lxgr 4y ago
    Depending on how you look at it, either both wire transfers and ACH, or neither are international. Both are transactions between US financial institutions, but can be used as the first or last leg of an international transfer (SWIFT or otherwise) through correspondent banking.
- lazide 4y ago
  1) ACH transactions are potentially refundable/reversable for quite a long period of time. I think the official period is only 30 days, but it's not unheard of for ACH transactions to be approved a year+ later. Wires are (generally) not reversible, and doing so requires intervention of someone manually at the Fed. 2) ACH transactions are 'pull' by their nature. ACH stands for Automated Clearing House, and it was created for checks. Unless denied by the bank being pulled from, all someone needs to withdraw or deposit funds in an account is the routing number and account number. If someone is playing games, that really doesn't require anything. Someone could print checks with that info and just start writing them, for instance, until they get arrested. Wires are send only, direct bank to bank (through the Fed), and are heavily controlled by the banks. 3) Send/Receive limits for ACH (because these are checks) can be arbitrarily low, at the banks discretion. It's not uncommon for it to be $100k/$250k or lower to help limit fraud, and often automated. Wire limits (if any) can be very high, and are generally more a matter of bank policy around authentication, and it's not that unusual for 8 or 9 digit wires to be happening regularly without problems. If someone is going to be liquidating $10 mln in something, 99.99% of the time it will be handled via wire.
  - lxgr 4y ago
    > ACH transactions are 'pull' by their nature. Besides ACH debit, there's also ACH credit transfers, which are "push" payments. I'd assume that this would be what a crypto exchange would use to pay out customer funds.
    - lazide 4y ago
      Thanks, yes. Pull/push, not enter/accept is perhaps a clearer way to put it. A separate party (not you) initiates the actual transaction, then the bank either accepts it or doesn’t.
      - lxgr 4y ago
        To a bank customer, that‘s not different from an incoming wire transfer though, right?
pedalpete 4y ago
I think we'd need to look at the use case for this, and the apparently short time that this will be out of service at binance. If it's a few days, and I need to move money 1) They've given a heads up so I have time to move it before if needed 2) Assuming my money is in crypto, I can easily move it elsewhere This isn't to say this isn't strange, and suspect, but the impact seems to be limited. At the same time, if I were to have a binance account, I'd make sure I also have an account on another exchange.

Ayesh 4y ago

> So this only affects a small portion of 0.01% of their userbase. I feel like this is definitely a lot more than that. Local banks in many countries, along with many online banks allow USD wire transfers that do not get converted. In countries like Sri Lanka, where the local currency is rapidly depreciating, many people actually never withdraw funds to local currency accounts to protect against this.

patrickaljord 4y ago
I doubt these kinds of countries represent more than 0.01% of users. Sure sucks for these tho they could use other exchanges to cash out or local OTCs.
- jrumbut 4y ago
  It's funny to hear someone say the quiet part loud. Wasn't servicing exactly those customers (people without recourse to stable currencies and the international banking system) always the answer to "what do crytocurrencies do well besides speculation and crime?"
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    What’s the quiet part? It’s sort of helping some people, mostly as a side effect, and not particularly well, all while generating massive negative externalities for everyone else.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      I think he means "the quiet part" because cryptoenthusiasts were very loud about the idea of 'uncensorable' financial inclusion for the developing world being a major use case until it was "does it matter? they're a tiny fraction of users anyway". If there were many people in the developing world countries whose currencies Binance doesn't support using the service, I suspect they relied on wire transfers in USD....

KptMarchewa 4y ago

The message is pretty crafted and has to mean 0.01% of users did use SWIFT in the last month vs at all.