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Binance banned from doing business in UK

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251–260 of 286 posts

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#251
I thought it was worth clarifying exactly what has happened here, since neither the BBC nor the FT articles make it particularly clear. The entity that the FCA has acted against is Binance Markets Limited (BML) which Binance acquired earlier this year, in part because of its existing registration with the FCA which allowed it to carry out a limited range of regulated activities in the UK.

The FCA has now placed restrictions on BML which remove its ability to carry out those regulated activities -- however BML was not actually doing any business in the UK so the effect of this is limited.

The FCA also issued a consumer warning which, among other other things, reiterated that no entities in the Binance group are registered with the FCA and therefore cannot carry out regulated activity in the UK. Again, the impact of this is limited since the entity that you interact with when using the Binance.com website is not based in the UK, and the FCA does not have jurisdiction over it.

A possibly outcome is that Binance will be a bit more circumspect about offering derivatives trading to UK retail because they want to build a more substantial UK business in the future. We saw this with Bybit a while ago, where they do not allow UK retail to use their website (although they have an exception for sophisticated investors, who can self-certify as an eligible counterparty and continue to trade on Bybit). I wouldn't be surprised to see this.

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#252
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can use multi sig wallets. Which are synonymous to Shamir’s Secret Sharing Algo; tldr you can generate say 5 keys and you need 3 of the 5 to unlock. As for if you die … you could use one of those services that will send an email out to your significant others if you don’t log in for X amount of time.

> As for if you die … you could use one of those services that will send an email out to your significant others if you don’t log in for X amount of time. And put your bitcoin private key in there? Surely whoever runs those services would take all your money.

If you use multiple services each with a piece of Shamir’s secret you are more protected. You can get more sophisticated with this if you want e.g each piece can be xored or encrypted with a value only that person would know e.g their birthday or their fav food.

Being your own secure bank isn’t a trivial task. Hopefully this can get easier in the future

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#253
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiat holder is a ridiculous term in a false dichotomy. A holding of BTC is a security holding just as holding stocks (despite the fact that they are not legally referred to as such.) Nobody chooses between holding dollars or holding BTC. Nobody. The fact that this parent has a number of children that don't seem to pick up on this is problematic to say the least.

What do you mean? Of course people choose to hold crypto or put their money in the bank or buy a stock market index fund or spend it on something.

Holding stock in a company (for instance via en index fund) is not a fiat holding. The fact that it is commonly priced in terms of fiat currency is not any different that the fact that BTC is too.

Neither of them have to be. All exchanges take place in pairs; one holding is exchanged for another. Buying BTC with dollars is (USD, BTC); buying Microsoft is (MSFT, USD); buying EUR with dollars is (EUR, USD).

Nothing prevents you from pricing Microsoft stock in BTC or BTC in EUR or Etherium.

The holding as such, however, is only a fiat holding when it is in fact either a (wad of) cash equivalents and/ or a bank balance.

There isn't a person on earth for which there is only two types of relevant holdings, in either USD or BTC. A person that (seriously) considers acquiring a crypto holding, such as BTC, is most likely choosing between other crypto currencies, gold or silver, primarily. Even more likely, they're merely FOMO-speculating as a complement to plain stock holdings.

The fact that a number of you don't seem to understand this should call your competency into question.

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#254
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but so does no support at all at Google. We can, by now, for go the nonsense that it is a free service: they make money selling our data so we pay. And yet, no support. And there are more examples of huge companies not giving any or adequate support. Here in the EU Revolut is known for support horror shows too. But yes, support via reddit is weird, I agree to that.

Google provides support roughly proportionately to how much you pay Google. Free-as-in-beer internet services tend to be offered as-is, and this is nothing unusual. A financial firm providing support through reddit, on the other hand, is a bad joke.

Yeah but the services from Google are not free. So it is just what you put up with. But even when I was funneling 100s of 1000s of $ through then both ways (adsense and adwords), the support was nonexistent. But I see your point.

If the support would be good, reddit would not be that much of an issue, but yes, you are right that it is at least weird. Probably they think it is all OK in the free-spirited crypto world.

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#255
post #23

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…

Is there an ELI5 guide to keeping coins secure when they're off-exchange? I heard terms like 'cold wallet', 'cold storage', but surely there's work that goes into creating a secure USB stick?

To me this is the crux problem impeding crypto. Read all of these solutions: will any of my non-techie friends do those things? No.

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#257
post #66
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an ELI5 guide to keeping coins secure when they're off-exchange? I heard terms like 'cold wallet', 'cold storage', but surely there's work that goes into creating a secure USB stick?

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…

Would storing a wallet's private key in an encrypted password manager be insecure in some way?

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#258
After the misconduct I personally witnessed with Binance's voting system[0], I don't think I'll ever use them. Basically, there was conclusive evidence candidate cryptocurrencies allowed blatant manipulation of the voting system and Binance did nothing. I forgot which cryptocurrency or voting round this was specifically but in the candidate cryptocurrency's official discord server, individual users were placing multiple votes instead of the single vote they were allotted. The discord server was filled with this blatant abuse of the voting system, screenshots were taken as evidence, yet the creators of the candidate cryptocurrency and Binance did nothing. I suspect Binance didn't care because more votes, even in violation of their rules, meant more BNB for them. And I suspect the creators of the cryptocurrency didn't care because they wanted to be listed on Binance. I'm certain this wasn't the only instance of misconduct out there, merely the only one I saw.

[0]: https://www.binance.com/en/vote

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should feel silly. It's not the market value of the spent Bitcoin ($20), but the opportunity cost (~$34k).

That is some dumb shit and not only should you feel silly you should feel stupid for saying it. If you buy anything at $X with intention of "hodling" it to increase it's value, unless you have a plan (i.e. I will sell at $Y) then you are just holding on to nothing. You will either sell too early or too late (now talking about the absolute maximum gains) and then you will always "feel silly". Unless OP actually put in…

> If you buy anything at $X with intention of "hodling" it to increase it's value, unless you have a plan (i.e. I will sell at $Y) then you are just holding on to nothing.

I don't think that's holding on to nothing just because there's no exit plan in place.

If I invest 30k in index funds that are managed by my bank, with the expectation that the value will rise and thus beat inflation, i wouldn't say that I'm holding on to nothing.

Similarly, if the value would rise to 35k over time, but something (like an economical crash, or any reason) would have me withdraw my money before that, I think it would be fair to say that my actions made me miss out on the total value of 35k.

I don't see how the case of Bitcoin is that much different - most people won't have sold at its highest point, but the average value has indeed increased bunches compared to when it was not popular.

I don't think you always need an exit strategy for every investment you make - wanting to diversify and perhaps beat the inflation seem like valid goals, regardless of whether you're putting money in index funds, are buying BTC, or are burying pots of gold in your back yard.

Volatility and risks are probably another story, though.

Re: Binance banned from doing business in UK

#260
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google provides support roughly proportionately to how much you pay Google. Free-as-in-beer internet services tend to be offered as-is, and this is nothing unusual. A financial firm providing support through reddit, on the other hand, is a bad joke.

Yeah but the services from Google are not free. So it is just what you put up with. But even when I was funneling 100s of 1000s of $ through then both ways (adsense and adwords), the support was nonexistent. But I see your point. If the support would be good, reddit would not be that much of an issue, but yes, you are right that it is at least weird. Probably they think it is all OK in the free-spirited crypto world.

Both Google Workspace and Google One provide immediate support, as well as any additional premium services.
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