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Voyager suspends trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards

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Re: Voyager suspends trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards

#71

Post by arcticbull »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #67
woodruffw wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointing to the list of failed banks from the website of the government agency that insures them and makes customers whole doesn't convey as strong of a point as you might have intended.

> makes customers whole *As long as whole is less than $250k.

Yes, that's the worst case - however in the real world the FDIC and the OTS (Office of Thrift Supervision) does their best to ensure nobody loses any amount of money regardless of their account balance.

In the case of WaMu in 2008 for instance, the OTS took possession of the bank and sold it to JPMorgan Chase. They didn't draw on the deposit insurance fund and everyone stayed whole. [1]

"According to FDIC spokeswoman LaJuan Williams-Young, 'No depositor has ever lost a penny of insured deposits since the FDIC was created in 1933.'" [2, 3]

[edit] Looks like I found one case where a bank failed and a total of $500,000 in uninsured deposits (not in a single account, in total) were forfeit. [4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Mutual

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Deposit_Insurance_Corp...

[3] https://www.magnifymoney.com/banking/deposits-bank-failures/

[4] https://www.depositaccounts.com/blog/bank-failures/#p21332

Re: Voyager suspends trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards

#72

Post by [deleted] »

teraflop wrote: post #64
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Voyager has tried to position itself as a crypto-based alternative to banking. From the front page: > Build your wealth > Earn up to 12% annual rewards. Beat your bank by earning top rewards each month on 39 digital assets with no lockups. They explicitly touted their benefits over using a traditional bank before they issued this notice. They also issued debit cards that they are now deactivating. Fundamental…

In particular, the Voyager home page says that "USD" and "cash" deposits are FDIC-insured, while the debit card landing page talks about how you can earn rewards while "spend[ing] USD Coin like cash". I can easily imagine a naive consumer coming away from this with the incorrect impression that USD Coin deposits, being equivalent to USD, are insured to the same extent.

[deleted]

Re: Voyager suspends trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards

#73

Post by addicted »

arcticbull wrote: post #71
AmericanChopper wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> makes customers whole *As long as whole is less than $250k.

Yes, that's the worst case - however in the real world the FDIC and the OTS (Office of Thrift Supervision) does their best to ensure nobody loses any amount of money regardless of their account balance. In the case of WaMu in 2008 for instance, the OTS took possession of the bank and sold it to JPMorgan Chase. They didn't draw on the deposit insurance fund and everyone stayed whole. [1] "According to FDIC spokeswoman…

I guess the only valid point is that the allure of small banks may be overstated.

There is a problem with large banks. It’s the same problem with large companies from any other industry. They gain oversized political power.

However, it’s weird to me how much we go after the banks for being large when it’s far more regulated than nearly every other industry in the country.

Re: Voyager suspends trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards

#74

Post by woodruffw »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #67
woodruffw wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointing to the list of failed banks from the website of the government agency that insures them and makes customers whole doesn't convey as strong of a point as you might have intended.

> makes customers whole *As long as whole is less than $250k.

Per individual account (joint accounts are double). The FDIC is more than happy to ensure all of the accounts you'd like to open.

(And as 'arcticbull mentioned: the FDIC has reliably made much larger account holders whole.)

Re: Voyager suspends trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards

#75

Post by ansible »

rootsudo wrote: post #65
ansible wrote: post #4

I sometimes wonder if I'm the only one who just wants a bank to be a bank. I've been with the same relatively small regional bank for 30 years. I have a checking account, savings account and that's it. They've been stable this entire time, and I've never worried my money was going to disappear. As another sign of being an old man, I'm old enough to remember the phrase "as safe as money in the bank". You see, when I w…

"as safe as money in the bank" I think you're conflating these defi platforms as banks, they are not - they are risk ladden investment platforms as listed on the website itself... "2022 Voyager Digital, LLC. VOYAGER is a trademark of Voyager IP, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Voyager Digital Ltd. All services provided by Voyager Digital, LLC, a FinCEN registered company. Investments are subject to market risk. NML…

As /u/thr0wawayf00 mentions, they issued debit cards and allowed people to do direct deposits into their accounts. So people were using it like a bank for their ordinary day-to-day financial transactions.

I, personally, would never have considered it a bank (or had any trust for anything crypto-related in general), but other people seemed to treat it like a bank.

Re: Voyager suspends trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards

#76

Post by AmericanChopper »

arcticbull wrote: post #71
AmericanChopper wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> makes customers whole *As long as whole is less than $250k.

Yes, that's the worst case - however in the real world the FDIC and the OTS (Office of Thrift Supervision) does their best to ensure nobody loses any amount of money regardless of their account balance. In the case of WaMu in 2008 for instance, the OTS took possession of the bank and sold it to JPMorgan Chase. They didn't draw on the deposit insurance fund and everyone stayed whole. [1] "According to FDIC spokeswoman…

> No depositor has ever lost a penny of insured deposits since the FDIC was created in 1933

This is just a truism because all insured deposits are insured, and all non-insured deposits are non—insured.

Re: Voyager suspends trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards

#77

Post by sdfhdhjdw3 »

prohobo wrote: post #52
sdfhdhjdw3 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is one of the biggest active victim-blaming communities. "Not your wallet not your coin", or whatever they like saying, is just is just deflection from valid criticism that crypto is very easy to exploit without recourse.

I disagree. To me it's like saying passwords are broken because most people choose "password123". Or like saying dollar bills are bad because they can rip. Safety rails should be made of course, but if you aren't even maintaining basic hygiene within a system then I'm sorry but that's on you. People are learning to use better passwords, and people learned long ago to keep their paper money in a wallet. The same will…

How much do you think is the fair value of 1 bitcoin?

Re: Voyager suspends trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards

#78

Post by rglover »

sdfhdhjdw3 wrote: post #2

I guess everyone's strategy in the crypto space is put everything you have on bitcoin and hope it goes up. It's a really good strategy, when it works.

Bitcoin is the only thing that will remain from the embers of this meltdown. This was the inevitable collapse of the shitcoin casinoconomy.

Re: Voyager suspends trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards

#79

Post by arcticbull »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #76
arcticbull wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's the worst case - however in the real world the FDIC and the OTS (Office of Thrift Supervision) does their best to ensure nobody loses any amount of money regardless of their account balance. In the case of WaMu in 2008 for instance, the OTS took possession of the bank and sold it to JPMorgan Chase. They didn't draw on the deposit insurance fund and everyone stayed whole. [1] "According to FDIC spokeswoman…

> No depositor has ever lost a penny of insured deposits since the FDIC was created in 1933 This is just a truism because all insured deposits are insured, and all non-insured deposits are non—insured.

Yes, you're right, however, do you have a source on how much has been lost in the last 89 years? I've had a lot of trouble finding anything more than that one bank that had $30M in assets losing $500K in total one time in Texas in the last 5 years.

Re: Voyager suspends trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards

#80

Post by Barrera »

> We are in discussions with various parties regarding additional liquidity and the go-forward strategy for the company. While we don’t have anything else to share today, we are working diligently and hope to have more information to share soon.

Translation: we are insolvent. The action we have taken prevents a run that will wipe out our working capital. We have been running a fractional reserve all along.

This is getting tedious.

Also: Voyager's alleged debtor, 3AC, just filed for Chapter 15 Bankruptcy:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-01/crypto-he...

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