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Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

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Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#151
post #58

"stuck transaction causing a backlog" Can someone explain the mechanism here? What is going on? (Is it something interally at Binance or something to do with the Bitcoin network.)

Two guesses: Guess one, they made a big transaction with most of their hot wallet, partially paying out to someone who withdrew, with the rest going back to the hot wallet. This transaction is in the queue but not finalized yet. The network won't accept any other spends of that money. Because that would be a double spend. So until that transaction is finalized (or it gets to old) that bitcoin is 'stuck'. Or alternati…

What queue? Is there a queue in the bitcoin network?

I thought it was a question of paying a high enough transaction fee and you would get your transaction done faster / within 10 minutes.

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#152
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto needed a tangible market/reason d'etre to be valuable. I have recently paid $40 for a $240 SWIFT transaction that I made on behalf of my father, as his bank (with most Russian banks) have been cut of from the world's financial system. Crypto is fulfilling a real need felt by many people all around the globe; it's just most of those people don't live in first world nations.

That's a decent use case for real stablecoins, not for something that can go up and down 20% within a few hours

The systems that execute the code for and track the values of stablecoins are themselves networks that only work because of consensus systems designed around a cryptocurrency incentive. So if you want to be able to send some large amount of USDC you need some small amount of ETH or MATIC or AVAX or whatever to pay for the usage of the shared ledger, and that's where these cryptocurrencies then get their underlying value.

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#153
post #108

I recently watched some traditional cable and was shocked by the number of crypto ads bombarding viewers. I have to imagine that this market was goosed up by retail investors trading on coinbase and binance just as the e-betting market was. The only difference between crypto and e-betting is that everyone got to be a winner on the crypto markets for a while. As users lose out, and exchanges stop ad campaigns - how lo…

> I'd doubt BTC will go to zero, but I wouldn't be surprised if the entire covid rally gets wiped out and we see BTC 6k again.

I agree. We invest a small amount of money into $BTC and I feel pretty neutral on the topic and my comments come from an intention of neutral observation.

I think $BTC is in a bad spot that's about to get worse in the short-term. It's getting hit from both ends: expensive energy, and high interest rates. Many believe it's supposed to be a hedge, and I think it still is, but it's not a hedge against a high interest rate environment in which the dollar and fiat currency (primary reserve currencies: USD, EUR, YEN, GPB, etc.) are still normalized and valued. It's more of a hedge against low interest rates and the central banks printing money in that environment IMO.

Long-term I'm bullish because it's a deflationary asset. Eventually we'll get to the point where, similar to maybe Japan or South Korea a pack of gum costs 1000 units of fiat, which will necessitate $BTC being "worth" hundreds of thousands of dollars (or it's worthless, I don't think there is a middle ground here). Unless something crazy happens, deflationary environments in fiat currency will always be avoided, and if you target 2% inflation every year it's all but guaranteed that $BTC will simply be "worth" a lot of dollars (or $0).

So I wouldn't be surprised to see $BTC hit $6,000 or even less. I would be surprised if within, say, 15 years it's worth that amount and not $0 or $1,000,000 (or something).

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#154
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.

I don't see how this relates to my comment above at all.

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#155
post #108

I recently watched some traditional cable and was shocked by the number of crypto ads bombarding viewers. I have to imagine that this market was goosed up by retail investors trading on coinbase and binance just as the e-betting market was. The only difference between crypto and e-betting is that everyone got to be a winner on the crypto markets for a while. As users lose out, and exchanges stop ad campaigns - how lo…

Bitcoins reason d'etre is to permit an exchange of value without involving the banks/classic financial infrastructure. It could go down to fractions of a penny and still be able to do that.

I use it as an alternative store of value. That has gone badly for me in the past month. But its supply economics make me still want it.

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#156

The goldbugs' saying that 'if you don't hold it, you don't own it' seems to apply...

While I somewhat agree, there's likely some irony in the upvotes since this is a mantra more often said than done. How many here self custody their gold?

The problem is exactly the same as in crypto, where they also say "not your keys, not your coins": You can self custody and it's 100% yours, until someone takes it off you and then it isn't. Trusting third parties is a risk, but so is taking care of your own security. In reality it depends a lot on the situation, you have to weigh the pros and cons of different strategies. As always, it's a lot more important that people are informed, not that everyone follow the same advice. A computer illiterate person who has no idea what a private key is better just leave their coins on a reputable exchange (obviously not Binance). And if I had no place to safely store my gold, I'd not take the risk of self custody with any substantial amounts.

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure. many of those speculators will be forced to wait for Binance to resume BTC orders, or use another centralized exchange, or use a bridge to swap BTC to another crypto asset.. Edit: swapping BTC needs a centralized bridge as child commenter notes

Unfortunately there is no decentralized exchange for BTC. There is no smart contracts on BTC so you have to somehow bridge it to something like Ethereum before you can swap it. And to bridge it you have to rely on some centralized party, such as WBTC. (I know renBTC but it's unclear who their validators are so I'd just assume it's centralized)

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#158
post #84
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

> As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized because people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. Nope, you just don't own any crypto assets if they are not stored on your own means. That's not hard to understand.

Conceptually it is very simple to understand.

The point that Moxie was making at the time was that, pragmatically, most users would end up not doing this. Just as most people share their thoughts on Facebook or Twitter and not on their own blogs, and if they do have their own blogs they don't run their own server, and if they do it's a virtual machine on Amazon's hardware.

So something can be theoretically capable of enabling enormous decentralisation but actually not have that effect at all.

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You do understand that proof of stake has absolutely nothing to do with transaction speed or fees -- speed depends on how many nodes you want to agree on any transaction (decentralization) while the fees depend on how congested the network gets in an open pricing model for fees?

Unless you are a crypto expert in it for the technology, that you happened to learn from random shiller YouTube videos.

Re: Temporary pause of Bitcoin withdrawals on Binance

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

amount of BTC on exchanges is something like < 14% of its total circulating supply.
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