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Hopefully Binance still has all the money customers deposited and didn't lose it or trade it for magic beans like FTX did. If a lot of customers take out their

• SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  > didn't lose it or trade it for magic beans like FTX did. Is anyone taking bets?
  • panarky 4y ago
    If you have funds in Binance, you've made a bet. If you don't you've made a different bet.
    • blantonl 4y ago
      Are there any derivatives on this I could place my bet on?
      • giantrobot 4y ago
        I'm looking for some bet derivative backed securities. You know they're good because security is in the name!
      • readams 4y ago
        It's really hard to place trades like this because there's so much counterparty risk and contagion from something like Binance collapsing is likely to make your ability to cash in on your bet difficult.
      • lostmsu 4y ago
        You should do your own research but there's something called BUSD.
• yashap 4y ago
  They’re a shady crypto exchange (is there any other kind?) that’s been banned in a tonne of countries around the world for flaunting financial regulations. If there’s a major run on Binance, I’d be shocked if depositors get their deposits back.
  • detrites 4y ago
    There have been a few major runs on Binance, measured in billions. So far they've not skipped a beat as a result. Certainly nothing like FTX. No guarantee of future performance, of course...
    • polygamous_bat 4y ago
      > So far they've not skipped a beat as a result. Except for all the times they have "halted withdrawals" while Tether printed out a couple billion fun bucks. Don't trust me, look for yourself: https://www.google.com/search?q=binance+halts+withdrawals https://www.google.com/search?q=binance+halts+withdrawals
      • detrites 4y ago
        It's impossible to run a crypto exchange without halting withdrawals periodically, especially when runs are happening. This is due to the security balance between difficult-to-access cold wallets containing the majority of funds, and easy-to-access hot wallets containing the minimum required for expected daily operations. No idea on the coincidence with Tether minting, other than Tether mints often whether directly or indirectly as a result of market conditions, which of course may also be influencing exchange withdrawal dynamics.
  • codetrotter 4y ago
    > is there any other kind? Yes. Kraken. > regular Proof of Reserves audits make it easy for clients to verify the balances they hold are backed by real assets, all with just a few easy clicks in their account. https://www.kraken.com/proof-of-reserves https://www.kraken.com/proof-of-reserves
• unixhero 4y ago
  Binance has always delivered. They are ranked number 1 for a reason, namely Trust. I'd be very interested in reading actual proof of them being shady. Please do share.
  • unmole 4y ago
    I would have thought they are ranked number 1 because they are lenient about KYC/AML.
    • unixhero 4y ago
      Not my experience. Regarding KYC: I have had to redo KYC in intervals and every submission had to be legible and they were picky. Not convinced. AML routines and that game I have no knowledge of. So maybe.
      • kortilla 4y ago
        How much money did you trade though. If you look the other way on KYC, you only do it when there is millions on the table.
        • Stagnant 4y ago
          You used to be able to use binance without KYC in its early years but more recently (around 2019 onwards) it has started requiring KYC even to get on the platform. At the same time they've forced old users to either provide KYC or disable their accounts. This probably only applies to EU users though.
  • codetrotter 4y ago
    Here is an example of why Binance is shady: https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-proof-of-reserves-is-pointless-without-liabilities-kraken-ceo/amp https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-proof-of-reserves-is-...
    • unixhero 4y ago
• zapdrive 4y ago
  I just withdrew 95% of my assets from Binance, and they came really fast. Some within seconds. I know "not your keys, not your coins". I just had like 10% of my coins on there because I like to gamble, I mean trade.
  • davidgerard 4y ago
    and yet, others frequently attest to trying to get their money or cryptos out and being rapped in a loop of Binance repeatedly demanding more KYC and they never get their funds out
    • mthoms 4y ago
      Moments ago I withdrew 5 figures worth and it literally took 6 minutes. If someone hasn't done enough KYC then... they haven't done enough KYC. Isn't adhering to KYC standards what we want? How is that bad?
    • zapdrive 4y ago
      Yea my account is already KYCed. They make it pretty clear how much you can withdraw without the KYC. So I guess, don't put your money in there until you are fully verified.
• glass3 4y ago
  >Hopefully Binance still has all the money How can they? SVB has made it clear that it is very difficult to maintain value. If Binance has invested all their money in securities, it's not unlikely that their investments have gone done down with the rising of the interest rates. If they keep all money in regular banking accounts, they may still have it. But they are exposed to the risk that their bank or their banks become insolvent.
  • trompetenaccoun 4y ago
    I have doubts about their finances but that comparison makes no sense. SVB is a bank, Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange that doesn't have the fiat custody issue to that extend because they're mainly not dealing in fiat. It's more of a question of how companies like Tether have invested their dollars and the answer is nobody really knows.
    • glass3 4y ago
      Tether has the same problem. What happens to Binance's Tether coins if Tether's bank collapses?
      • trompetenaccoun 4y ago
        They claim most of their money is not with banks (number 1 is supposedly commercial paper). Also what is with banks certainly isn't with American ones. But this goes back to the point earlier about users having no idea about the reserves. No one should use Tether and I don't trust Binance for a second, pretty sure they trade against their own users. But it's also more resilient than many think, including people who are in crypto. Binance isn't well trusted by insiders and whales. But they have a lot of customers, especially in developing countries less served by more reputable exchanges and banks. And since they offer USDT, USDC as well as their own stablecoin, whatever that's backed by, it would not be catastrophic for them even if one of the stablecoin issuers went down.
        • ceejayoz 4y ago
• TheAlchemist 4y ago
  "Hopefully Binance still has all the money customers deposited and didn't lose it or trade it for magic beans like FTX did." Of course they don't have all the money ! If they had, they wouldn't be targeted by virtually all financial regulators on the planet and they would publish a real audit.
  • jackstraw14 4y ago
    If they had money they would publish an audit, even if not required to do that to continue operations?
    • piva00 4y ago
      If they cared about building trust in an industry based on confidence, yes?
      • justinclift 4y ago
        I think you missed the word "tricks" in there. eg -> ... "an industry based on confidence tricks".
    • tenpies 4y ago
      I agree with your first point, but realistically, is there any audit that would satisfy its critics? If the Western governments want to take you down, no amount of words on a piece of paper sprinkled with legal incantations is going to stop them. They'll just decide something you did which was legal, is now illegal and go from there. Your only real option is to abandon that sinking ship and let the captain feel in control. Years later when the population is on life rafts and they've elected a new competent captain, you can return.
  • pibechorro 4y ago
    you really think that is why they are targeted? cute. its about control.
• dclowd9901 4y ago
  This is literally the eulogy for SVB. Can we all just agree that 1) it’s ok for banks to fail and 2) it’s not ok for people who put their money in banks to lose their money. So what is 3? Why don’t we just have nationalized banking? I mean, seriously?
  • jackstraw14 4y ago
    If banks aren't allowed to fail then they become some kind of protected entity. Are you saying we should just let it happen?
    • dclowd9901 4y ago
      That’s kind of the opposite of what I’m saying. We need a secondary class of banks: ones that don’t leverage their deposits into investments, but rather simply keep people’s money safe. That way you can choose your bank. Do you want a bank that will actually yield return on your deposits and pay you back in kind or do you just want to keep your money safe? It would effectively bring back investment carried savings but also allow people to store their money in safer banks with actual deposit insurance if that was their goal. The problem is that a bank is a bank and we don’t know what their business priorities or risk calculus is in any meaningful terms, so how are we supposed to choose a “safe” one?
      • butlerm 4y ago
        There are legal changes that could be made to safely support that in different types of accounts without requiring customers to switch banks. In my view anything referred to as a deposit should be insured in any case, but there are other possibilities for making a conservative return.
      • kevinak 4y ago
        There’s a theory that if there was such a bank, all money would flow to it making all of the other ones insolvent, in turn the financial system would collapse, since no bank has enough. The whole industry is just a house of cards. There was actually a recent case where one bank (Custodia) tried to do this - they wanted to charge fees instead of gambling with their clients money. But the FED denied their application. They say it’s because they wanted to service crypto companies - but how would that even be a problem if they’ve always got all the deposits at hand. It smells fishy.
• ivanmontillam 4y ago
  > I mean, it sucks for Binance, but they are kinda shady and the world might be better off without them. For countries like Venezuela and Argentina, Binance has a messianic reputation in the sense that P2P currency exchanges are what keeps the economy functioning for the lower-rank citizens. Top-tier citizens just use Zelle, but as you might not know, not everyone can afford/is allowed to go the U.S. and open a bank account (e.g. I, for instance, was denied a tourist visa last time, though I am more than able to afford vacations there). If Binance were to fail, other P2P exchanges (like Reserve, Airtm and the now-dead Localbitcoins) wouldn't be able to take up with the current volume of P2P transactions of both countries. I'm not saying these countries would grind to a halt as "direct" P2P currency exchange would still exist, but people that rely on Binance P2P for their day-to-day operations would downgrade their lifestyle, big time.
  • pibechorro 4y ago
    Those benefiting from traditional banking, ie the 1% of the world in the US and EU, are largely completely naive to the tragic despair of the other 99%, either completely unbanked, oppressed via predatory inflation policy and capital controls or just simply rigged against them. Crypto was created from the ruins of bailouts where the poor masses where put on the hook for the crisis created by central banks ad wall st. That hasnt changed. Innovation and critical mass usage will arise from the bottom up, Nigeria, Venezuela, Argentina, El Salvador. Nations like the US and EU will be the last to embrace it, at their peril, when they have no real other choice to not be left behind.
• _heimdall 4y ago
  It's so interesting to see the tone differences when SVB was on the edge vs Binance I my speaking in general here because I have no idea what you're opinion may have been on the SVB depositor bailout. The large majority of commentary I saw over the weekend after SVB failed was how it would wreck average customers and how the government had to step in to make them while. I'm not sure if it's because this is Binance or crypto in general but it seems like people either don't care or want to see it fail regardless of their depositors' investments
  • brianshaler 4y ago
    Banking is a requirement for businesses to function. Depositors have no choice but to put their money in some bank. It's debatable whether depositors ought to take a haircut or be made whole if their bank suddenly fails. The greater the perceived risk of deposits being held at a bank being worth less than 100 cents on the dollar, the more flighty deposits will be. Even if depositors got back 90% of their money, the concern with SVB was probably more about how long companies' cash would be inaccessible. Perhaps some of the hubbub the weekend SVB failed could have been avoided if the FDIC was able to have some sort of policy to release immediately not only the insured amount, but perhaps also some "safe" percentage that is expected with some confidence to be recovered, like 50%. Meanwhile, over in crypto land, choosing to gamble on the volatile price swings of speculative digital assets (aka "magic beans") in a market driven in no small part by people evading laws—whether it's illicit purchases, money laundering, ignoring securities regulations, wash trades, pump-and-dump schemes, etc.—is a completely different matter. It is still, in a certain light, sad that someone would become unemployed because their crypto startup employer's capital was lost in the collapse of a fraudulent exchange. Or someone lost their life savings. But really, what did you expect would happen? While one could be less sympathetic of small business employees losing their income due to a bank failure or more sympathetic of a crypto user losing their life savings, they're drastically different circumstances. I don't see how one could expect people to either take a blanket "save all depositors and gamblers" nor "all depositors or gamblers should lose everything." Keep in mind also that practically no one has argued in favor of shareholders in SVB getting anything but a 100% loss on their equity. If you view crypto people as "investors" then there should also be the expectation that one of risks they are taking by "investing" in magic beans is that whether or not they turn out to be magical, the place that stored them may unexpectedly blink out of existence.
• xwdv 4y ago
  If the deposits don’t exist it’s still fine. A lot of people have lost deposits from crypto collapses and they’ve been fine, because currently no one uses crypto for actual working day to day capital (paying bills), it’s all speculative holdings that they could afford to lose.
  • bagacrap 4y ago
    Ehh, lots of people put money there they really can't lose, such as savings for a house down payment. Financial literacy is very rare. I would say that at least any Americans who lose money there "deserve" what's coming to them since binance was banned in the US.
    • xwdv 4y ago
      Meh, anyone who’s saving for a house down payment wouldn’t be putting their money into a speculative asset. They knew exactly what they were doing.
• jaequery 4y ago
  If Binance (hypothetically) does have 100% of the customer reserves, what difference does it make if they all withdraw? Doesn’t Binance make money off of trades / transactions rather than using the customer funds like FTX?