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Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

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Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#91
post #20

You really cannot make this up. As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized because people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. Moxie nailed it

meanwhile anybody who has their own keys is able to transact with it as per usual. “not your keys not your coin.” holding keys are not trivial but far simpler than running a server, better analogy might be to do with people not wanting to stake with a validator because it’s easier to use a centralized staking service.

Transacting with it is one thing, withdrawing into fiat is quite another. Let's not pretend that most people holding BTC are holding it to buy goods and services rather than as a speculative vehicle.

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#92
post #3

So what exactly is the point of holding BTC if it can be held hostage like this? Crypto continues to fail at its most basic premises.

Holding crypto on an exchange is like giving money to a guy on the corner who knows a broker to put in the stock market and telling them you don't need the account numbers, you trust them. If you're going to do crypto, get a wallet setup where you have the keys to it.

There's two counter points to this. The first is that in terms of day to day likelihood of losing the bitcoin, you're probably generally safer with an exchange than holding the crypto yourself. Secondly, if the exchanges actually do collapse, then whilst you won't lose your BTC if you're not on the exchange, your BTC are probably going to be worth a lot less anyway, so you're still exposed to the risk of exchanges collapsing. If you're the average joe who has bitcoin (you probably shouldn't have bitcoin) but using an exchange isn't crazy.

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#93
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if that's even a majority of bitcoin owners. I use the term owners loosely.

Does it even matter? What is interesting and actually-important is that it is even possible. Just because most people do something dumb doesn't mean we should throw up our hands in defeat and build systems where it isn't even possible to do something smart.

This is the greatest comment I've read on HN in years.

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#95
post #20

You really cannot make this up. As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized because people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. Moxie nailed it

What is moxie?

It's guy that promised you private chats by asking you to register with a phone number.

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#96
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't have much to do with people being stupid. If you want to trade more than once a month, you pretty much have to keep the funds on an exchange. Otherwise transfer fees would kill any profit you made. If you're not trading often, you may still want to take the risk due to free in-exchange transfers.

Sounds like the problem's with trading, rather than using it like currency. I've used it for legal, in-person transactions just fine. There are also decentralized exchanges, but the peanut gallery and the incompetent masses would hardly know about them. Shockingly, "get rich quick" schemes are a bad idea. Who would have thought? Oh, wait. Everyone. I still think most cryptocurrencies should be highly legislated, beca…

> Sounds like the problem's with trading, rather than using it like currency.

The context here is an exchange limiting withdrawals, so... Yes, exactly?

Decentralised exchanges have massive fees in practice. If you want to buy in and cash out after a year, sure. But show me one that takes <0.1% for the whole transaction including transfer/signing fees and supports BTC.

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#97
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, there is no point in holding crypto on an exchange. If you hold your own crypto, you don't have this problem.

So crypto is fine for transactions that I can wait a few tens of minutes to a few hours to resolve, but not ones that I want to make at the rate of every fiat currency I hold. I can see how other people would have that use-case.

There are cryptocurrencies with sub second transactions and zero or almost zero transaction fees. Welcome to the world of Proof of Stake.

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#98
post #3

So what exactly is the point of holding BTC if it can be held hostage like this? Crypto continues to fail at its most basic premises.

Holding crypto on an exchange is like giving money to a guy on the corner who knows a broker to put in the stock market and telling them you don't need the account numbers, you trust them. If you're going to do crypto, get a wallet setup where you have the keys to it.

Where do you initially buy that crypto, then? And where would you sell it, in case you need other currencies?

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#100
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"real crypto has never been tried"

I'm still waiting for the actual bitcoin infrastructure or algorithm to break. It's been 10 years and a trillion dollar network. Just because exchanges fail, and there are shitloads of scams, doesn't mean the underlying technology isn't super interesting and can actually grow into something amazing in a few decades.

> I'm still waiting for the actual bitcoin infrastructure or algorithm to break.

It already happened: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Value_overflow_incident

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