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Binance to acquire FTX

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271–280 of 790 posts

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#271
post #233
post #216

I'm glad a big government supporter such as SBF is out of crypto leadership. Crypto is an anarchist experiment and it should remain that way

Why not both? Centralized where people trust, decentralized where people don't trust. In my interpretation, the Bitcoin white paper states that BTC is an answer to _the lack of regulation_ that allowed the fat cats to abuse the money supplies. It's kind of ironic, but to see crypto as purely anarchistic is to ignore that it is essentially _democratized_ money. Both: I use exchanges as well as cold storage.

I never understood. Where's the democracy here, exactly? A regular user cannot afford to participate in the decision making of the system in any meaningful way. In fact, today, most users don't even directly use it, instead relying on processors such as Coinbase. The "not your keys, not your coins" meme exists due to this. The original paper described a democratic system where people voted with their processors, but failed to take into account that people with more processors get more votes. I find it hard to argue that the system as it currently exists is more democratic than the currency emitted by the central bank of your country.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#272

Binance was threatening to dump a huge amount of FTT tokens on the market. FTX has a big+vulnerable position in FTT. FTX asked Binance to sell them the tokens for a fixed price, so as not to crash the FTT token price. Binance declined - this was yesterday/today. Of course the price of FTT crashed today. And now Binance buys FTX to help them out... smells like Binance played 4D chess all along. https://decrypt.co/1136…

> smells like Binance played 4D chess all along It's not really "4D chess" to screw over your competitor to corner the market. That's like, business 101.

Business 101 is buy low, sell high.

Winning an evenly matched game of prisoner's dilemma with billions at stake is about as close to 4D chess there is.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#273
post #143

Binance was threatening to dump a huge amount of FTT tokens on the market. FTX has a big+vulnerable position in FTT. FTX asked Binance to sell them the tokens for a fixed price, so as not to crash the FTT token price. Binance declined - this was yesterday/today. Of course the price of FTT crashed today. And now Binance buys FTX to help them out... smells like Binance played 4D chess all along. https://decrypt.co/1136…

Isn't FTT like FTX's own issuing tokens? It's like printing one's own money. But when the backing firm fails, the printed money is worthless, just like what LUNA issued by Terra had become.

[deleted]

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#274
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I earned $1,200 from Gemini's stablecoin GUSD's interest last year. Withdrew the extra and bought some nice pendant lights for my new kitchen.

I understand many did well with Bitconnect too...

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#275

Some more background: the companies were engaged in fighting over regulations, and on a personal basis between the 2 CEOs. It went down to really childish levels at some point. But one thing is undeniable: SBF (FTX CEO) was trying to weaponize US regulation against his biggest rival CZ (Binance CEO). CZ retaliated by selling the FTT token, exposed the fact FTX was over-leveraged, and took over. This is, as the kids o…

For those not up to date on crypto people, SBF is Sam Bankman-Fried [1] and CZ is Changpeng Zhao [2]. I don't know why they insist on being called by their initials like they're some sort of ticker symbol.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried

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

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#276
As Matt Levine just pointed out in his newsletter, FTX was doing the same to bail out other failing crypto companies in the summer. Now it needs a bail out itself.

What will happen to Binance in a few months if the system is now unwinding? That's the question right, if it's a system problem or FTX was greedy and over leveraged. For me it smells like a system issue because it's all based on funny money.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#277

Binance was threatening to dump a huge amount of FTT tokens on the market. FTX has a big+vulnerable position in FTT. FTX asked Binance to sell them the tokens for a fixed price, so as not to crash the FTT token price. Binance declined - this was yesterday/today. Of course the price of FTT crashed today. And now Binance buys FTX to help them out... smells like Binance played 4D chess all along. https://decrypt.co/1136…

Binance continues to amaze. Does anyone even know where it operates out of these days?

They said they’d announce it shortly in July (https://decrypt.co/105376/where-is-binance-hq-ceo-cz-says-co...). Since then, nothing

They got regulatory approval to operate in Dubai and have offices there, so maybe there (https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/09/20/binance-secures-l...)

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#278
post #251
post #216

I'm glad a big government supporter such as SBF is out of crypto leadership. Crypto is an anarchist experiment and it should remain that way

Rest assured that the regulations are coming because the crypto simply did a speed-run of unregulated securities market and repeated every fraud or scam that the traditional markets went through over the history. In the process, huge fortunes were created and libertarians were empowered(but not enough to be the main political power). Congrats to them but there's nothing anarchist left in crypto, they even end up cons…

Exactly, it's bizarre to read about the wildcat banking era in the US and why the Fed was created while simultaneously looking around at the rate of mainstream crypto scams and institutional failures nowadays.

The Fed sure isn't without its issues, but it was created to solve the exact problems that we're now seeing proliferate via the crypto space.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing but a good old bank run Exchanges aren't subject to bank runs. If an exchange (or even broker) cries run, they were taking novel risks.

They aren't brokerages, they're banks pretending to be exchanges. They do fractional reserve banking with user deposits.

Fractional reserve in the context of banking is completely different because the FDIC backstops runs and the Fed backstops the FDIC.

Nobody backstops FTX or any other crypto exchange so its better described here as 'the yolo lifestyle'.

A modern day bank run in traditional finance is functionally impossible* (up to the FDIC insurance limits, and often higher in practice - there were no imposed limits at WaMu for instance).

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#280
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12:38 PM · Nov 7, 2022 2) FTX has enough to cover all client holdings. [0] 4:03 PM · Nov 8, 2022 2) Our teams are working on clearing out the withdrawal backlog as is. This will clear out liquidity crunches; all assets will be covered 1:1. This is one of the main reasons we’ve asked Binance to come in. [1] has enough to cover all client holdings ---> not enough to cover all client holding in 24 hours. Either they los…

If everybody walked into their bank right now to withdrawal, they couldn't cover either. Right?

You may as well say "if everybody jumped off a bridge at the same time...."

How many bank runs have there been in 2022 in the developed world?

The reason people don't try to pull their money out all at once is because their deposits are insured, because their bank pays into an insurance pool.

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