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Binance banned from doing business in UK

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Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#91

I've always believed in the strength and independence of Bitcoin and cryptocoins. But maybe there's just so many evil-doers/criminals out there that the novel trust free payment network will crumble under the weight of all of the adjacent scams. I hope not, but I find myself in the truly puzzling position of rooting for the regulators sometimes. I can easily partition bitcoin's good qualities from all of the bad thin…

The bad people don't disappear when you create gatekeepers. Their power multiplies exponentially, as they use the regulatory process to suppress competition and hold the consumer captive. Theory would suggest that in a free market, people who act maliciously, and fail to build a positive reputation, would steadily be abandoned for those who act benevolently, and succeed in building a positive reputation.

This would be a corrective feedback mechanism which steadily makes the social configuration less exploitive, and I think one could reasonably assume it is a far less failure-prone feedback mechanism than periodic political elections.

Beyond the theoretical arguments, the empirical evidence suggests this is what happens. For example, countries with lower levels of government spending as a percentage of GDP have on average higher rates of economic development. For a more relevant example, the quality of project needed for a token sale to be successful massively rose between 2015, when the first token sale was announced, and late 2017, when the SEC shut down token sales. The market was evolving, while massively expanding the number of people participating in early-stage investing: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11408-020-00366-0

>"The average ICO has almost 4700 contributors. The median contributor invests a relatively small amount. The ICO market appears to have successfully given access to the financing of innovation to a new class of investors, which is a long-standing public policy issue"

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#92
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as large amounts of funds are pulled from Binance, we will find out if they've been stealing. A good regulatory step for the US would be to require that it can't be harder to withdraw than to deposit. Any ID requirements have to be completed before depositing , not withdrawing. And all withdrawals must be processed by T+2. Same rules as regular brokers.

> And all withdrawals must be processed by T+2. I've never seen this notation before. Does it refer to blocks, hours, or (gasp!) days?

Given the typical settlement time of financial systems, I would assume it's days.

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#93
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this coin 'Monero' being used by these fraudsters and criminals to hide their activity? [0] The fact that this is making ransomware run rampant and now the victim is also part of the unfortunate process of paying the ransom in Bitcoin, (and now apparently they can also pay in Monero at the hackers, 'convenience')[1] it's getting to a point where regulators need to step in before this happens to more companies…

Why do many meatspace drug dealers only accept cash?

Source?

Also, did you just forget we were (and we are) in a pandemic that started a year ago, forcing almost every person in lockdown?

What do you think was the mode of choice for drug dealers to launder their money through? I'll give you a hint, it is certainly not cash.

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#94
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cash are only used for scammer and fraudster." More true in today since most person have used a credit card and phone paying. Any tool with anonymous means can also have uses for bad person. But is not any excuse for banning, good person can sometimes not want to make a public purchase.

so what is the point of cryptocurrencies then? other than to make ponzi schemes efficient to the unsuspecting general public who don't even know what they are getting into? [0] > But is not any excuse for banning, good person can sometimes not want to make a public purchase. It is when ransomware is on the rise [1] and the cryptocurrency exchanges like binance are letting them get away with it. [0] https://www.cnbc.c…

The utility, to me, seems to be creating a global financial market that is truly trustless and permissionless, aka no gatekeepers.

Right now, if I want to buy American stocks, I have to go through the handful of brokers licensed to sell foreign stocks in my country. I have to meet their funding requirements and I have to pay their hefty fees, not to mention meet their kyc requirements. This effectively makes it inaccessible to small players who might not meet the minimum requirements and/or pay the fees.

With crypto, I can buy wrapped synthetic versions of the stocks without going through any third party. The only fees I pay are transaction fees.

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#95
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as large amounts of funds are pulled from Binance, we will find out if they've been stealing. A good regulatory step for the US would be to require that it can't be harder to withdraw than to deposit. Any ID requirements have to be completed before depositing , not withdrawing. And all withdrawals must be processed by T+2. Same rules as regular brokers.

> And all withdrawals must be processed by T+2. I've never seen this notation before. Does it refer to blocks, hours, or (gasp!) days?

Trade day plus 2 business days.[1] This is the standard in the securities industry for most transaction settlements.

Not paying on time is called a "fail". There are penalties. For US stockbrokers, FINRA enforces them.

In the real world, a broker failing to pay out cash on time to multiple customers is a Big Deal. Alerts come up on Bloomberg terminals. It's headline news. Institutional investors stop sending trades to that broker and start demanding collateral. The SEC, FINRA, NASDAQ, NYSE, the Fed, and other become involved. See the collapse of Bear Sterns.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%2B2

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#96
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This perspective is just so alien to me. I don't understand how anyone can casually express such vulgar celebration of the state, knowing the misery that it inflicts on the most vulnerable in society, with money as its chief method of lifelong emotional torment. Moreover, your predictions seem completely bombastic to me. Has there ever been a case where governments banned something and the resulting black market sett…

The State can be replaced democratically. Crypto is full of pump and dump and exit scams. Bitcoin et al are also algorithmically supply inelastic. As demand for the coins decreases (due to the inability to actually buy them), the price will decline. This is basic supply and demand economics.

> The State can be replaced democratically.

Is this still relevant in the information age?

I care a lot about my communities, and I don't think that, from my position of privilege, I can justify going around and telling people, "just vote - the violence against you will stop eventually."

I'm not saying crypto is a complete answer either, but I think that its status as a change agent outside the political process is something to be celebrated, not condemned.

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#97
post #72
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use a hardware wallet to securely generate keys and sign transactions. Hardware wallet is meant for secure use of cryptocurrency, but it is not optimal for long term storage. It's important to buy devices only from trusted vendors, and to make sure they're not been tampered with (never buy them from a third party). For long term storage, you need indestructible and physically secured backup of your keys. Basically, y…

> Basically, you just need to write down the 12 or 24 seed words generated by your hardware wallet Why is that in any way more secure than writing down the private key itself? (inb4 "need to find both the hardware and the written seed words" that's equivalent to writing down the private key and then cutting the paper in half)

In some ways it's less secure, because seed phrases are usually master private keys, versus a single private key.

The point is that you can decide what to do with it... be your own bank. You can also add a password to a seed phrase backup if that makes more sense for your threat model.

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His full quote, from the actual source (2003): "There's nothing special about ZFS that requires/encourages the use of ECC RAM more so than any other filesystem. If you use UFS, EXT, NTFS, btrfs, etc without ECC RAM, you are just as much at risk as if you used ZFS without ECC RAM. Actually, ZFS can mitigate this risk to some degree if you enable the unsupported ZFS_DEBUG_MODIFY flag (zfs_flags=0x10). This will checksu…

Exactly. You are at no greater risk of data loss if you use ZFS as appose to another file system. You stated "Also a good idea to use ECC Memory with the ZFS filesystem". You should have probably stated its a good idea to use ECC memory, period. Instead you tied ECC to ZFS.

I would simply say: if you love your data, use ECC RAM. Additionally, use a filesystem that checksums your data, such as ZFS.

Both are better than either, and either is better than neither. Especially if you're storing cryptocurrencies on it.

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#99

I've always believed in the strength and independence of Bitcoin and cryptocoins. But maybe there's just so many evil-doers/criminals out there that the novel trust free payment network will crumble under the weight of all of the adjacent scams. I hope not, but I find myself in the truly puzzling position of rooting for the regulators sometimes. I can easily partition bitcoin's good qualities from all of the bad thin…

The bad people don't disappear when you create gatekeepers. Their power multiplies exponentially, as they use the regulatory process to suppress competition and hold the consumer captive. Theory would suggest that in a free market, people who act maliciously, and fail to build a positive reputation, would steadily be abandoned for those who act benevolently, and succeed in building a positive reputation. This would b…

"For example, countries with lower levels of government spending as a percentage of GDP having on average higher rates of economic development."

Any citation for that?

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#100

I kept my funds on Binance for a while, for convenience's sake. However, the old rule applies: not your keys, not your crypto. Keeping anything on an exchange, for the time being, is just too risky. This is another example of it. Governments are still trying to figure out how to regulate crypto, ever shifting the amount of hurdles between crypto and the world of fiat. I'd advise to pull funds if possible. I've recent…

I don't know about that. For people like you and me that are likely to be familiar with good infosec practices, run open source OSes and only open source software, with no possibility of spyware or ransomware, have offline backups and offsite backups, sure, this advice is fine.

For most people though, I feel like exchanges are safer from the more common threats: viruses, ransomware, failed hard drives, fire, floods, "gimme-your-laptop" gunpoint, ... They ironically also make your crypto slightly more anomymized since you aren't always spending out of the same wallet address so when you transfer crypto to someone, they don't automatically know your crypto net worth.

I wouldn't trust Binance though. I moved all my funds off Binance for one reason -- their UI (especially authentication workflow) is super buggy, and that makes me extremely not confident that their backend isn't equally buggy. To top that, when I tried to report bugs to them they wanted my national ID to even engage in conversation, instead of fixing the bugs. Fuck that. Fix bugs first and only then will I trust you with my ID.

Kraken, Bittrex, Coinbase Pro have solid UIs and give me more confidence in the quality of their engineering.

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