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Binance to acquire FTX

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Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#241
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dare Obasanjo: https://twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/1589867071693017088

Total unrelated but son of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olusegun_Obasanjo . Numero uno looter of Africa

He very cleverly took his name out of his dad's wikipedia entry. It's still there in older versions: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Olusegun_Obasanjo...

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#242

You know what this makes me kind of wonder... back earlier in the year SBF made a big show of coming in and investing in a bunch of the companies that were collapsing due to the LUNA/3AC/Celsius problems. He stepped in and to some extent halted the unwinding of some of these issues. It turns out now that it's likely FTX is underwater, and Binance is basically doing the same thing - coming in, picking them up cheap an…

Binance has serious legal issues (governmental investigations) and isn't based out of any jurisdiction. A Binance failure would have consequences that are very hard to predict

Binance reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_In... but I don't think they're stealing customer money. It is amazing that they have evaded American regulators so long. I think one day they are going to disable trading in dollars.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#243

You know what this makes me kind of wonder... back earlier in the year SBF made a big show of coming in and investing in a bunch of the companies that were collapsing due to the LUNA/3AC/Celsius problems. He stepped in and to some extent halted the unwinding of some of these issues. It turns out now that it's likely FTX is underwater, and Binance is basically doing the same thing - coming in, picking them up cheap an…

Binance has serious legal issues (governmental investigations) and isn't based out of any jurisdiction. A Binance failure would have consequences that are very hard to predict

Unless Mr CZ is on the moon, he very much is based out of some jurisdiction. It just might not be extraditable to the US.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#244
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Every banker knows that if he has to prove he is worthy of credit, in fact his credit is gone." - Bagehot

"Exchanges"(Exchanges and brokerages in one) are not supposed to be banks. Everything can be withdrawn from brokerages without them being insolvent.

If the brokerage provides leverage to its customers, it can be subject to the same sort of bank runs that a normal bank can.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTX bet customer funds through the CEO’s hedge fund on an FTX token [1]. The token price fell when this was revealed [2]. The hedge fund, and thus FTX, had less money than they owed lenders and customers. FTX found a bail-out in Binance; otherwise everyone would have lost their money. [1] https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/02/divisions-in-sa... [2] https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/11/08/ftt-plummets-as-..…

It isn't officially a bailout. They just said they intend to acquire FTX. But, once they look at the books they may backout out the deal, especially if most customers want to take their money out. What is the point of buying an exchange that has no customers?

The point is the same reason why FTX bought all the smaller crypto firms that were about to collapse.

Preventing exposing the entire crypto currency ecosystem as fraud.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#246

Why is it apparently so difficult to run a solvent crypto exchange? On the face, it shouldn't be too hard, just take deposits, stick them in a wallet, and swap client balances in a database. Is the temptation to maintain a reserve ratio < 1 just too great? Do operators try to earn small, low-risk return on client funds only to find there are no low-risk, positive-return assets in crypto? Are the extending margin to c…

> Why is it apparently so difficult to run a solvent crypto exchange? Running a stock exchange is a hard business too; you are the market maker, you set the spread, and the most sophisticated investors in the world are trying to arbitrage you. Any mistake can potentially ruin you. If you do you job right you take a tiny sliver of profit from each transaction. Now consider crypto, where your ability to pause the marke…

That's why you get outsiders on your exchange to make markets and you just charge commissions and access fees.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#247
post #57

Its funny how a few days back some people on HN were saying FTX is unlikely to be illiquid because SBF is a genius from JaneStreet.

And people who knew what they were actually talking about were pointing out that it's unlikely anyone would have voluntarily left Jane Street as early as he did. But they were largely ignored.

It seems likely that the Kimchi arbitrage (arbitraging between exchanges in Korea an the rest of the world) was indeed massively profitable. He took a wrong turn later.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#248
Will be interesting to see how this assertive prediction from "someone in the industry" a few days ago plays out:

>> Regardless if FTT collapses, it wouldn't matter cause insolvency both the asset and liability side of the balance sheet would go down. [1]

We got our FTT collapse today, let's see if the "experts" are correct.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33467429

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#249

This is great, he was lecturing how stock exchanges should work & on the cover of Fortune as the next Warren Buffet all of what.. 8 weeks ago? SV fintech keeps reinventing all the mistakes of 19th century banking. BNPL is the next explosion btw.

Found it:

Speaking with the Financial Times on July 14, Bankman-Fried stated that if FTX can become the top crypto exchange and supplant rivals such as Coinbase and Binance, the idea of purchasing giants such as Goldman Sachs and CME group is not off the table:

“If we are the biggest exchange, [buying Goldman Sachs and CME] is not out of the question at all.”

https://cointelegraph.com/news/billionaire-sbf-says-ftx-may-...

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance is already "AI-powered"...insurance companies employ statisticians to build prices, and they have been using low-cost distribution since the 90s. Speaking generally, insurance was one of the first industries to deploy technology effectively in their core business. They are still doing that. The issue with companies like Lemonade is that they are rebranding the same product as "AI" (afaik, Lemonade is just t…

This. I’m not sure what Lemonade does differently from other insurers than providing a nicer UI. They likely also have lower costs due to eliminating the middle men whose job is to translate text on the screen into words spoken to a customer. So their lower costs could actually be legitimate.

Obviously this does vary because retail insurance is usually sold locally but the middle men were eliminated years ago.

First, it was phones. This happened in the early 90s. Then it was internet which was largely finished by the early 2010s. The only exception for this is that online price-comparison websites have added back some distribution costs...but you still need to spend on marketing if you are online (generally speaking, online ads aren't cheap, I know insurers in my market that have moved away from price-comparison/online advertising because of the cost).

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