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Binance to acquire FTX

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Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#431

Post by dmitrygr »

lancesells wrote: post #174
miohtama wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTX/Alameda holds tons of illiquid FTT tokens that they cannot sell and which Binance was dumping. Thus, they might have not technically lied. But they were still wrong from the accounting perspective - they surely understood that FTT token cannot be used to cover gaps in large scale. It was the question that matters "how fast you can process user withdrawals and with what risk" Sam owns 8% of Robin Hood that is wort…

> Sam owns 8% of Robin Hood that is worth around ~$1B - he could sell that and cover some of the gap. Not knowing too much about this space have you ever seen anything like this happen? A CEO using their personal wealth to cover their customers funds seems unlikely.

> have you ever seen anything like this happen? A CEO using their personal wealth to cover their customers funds

No, but I would love to see it happen, enforced by a court, and backed by a promise of jail time if the CEO fails to comply in a timely fashion.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#432

Post by fantasyman1 »

lancesells wrote: post #174
miohtama wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTX/Alameda holds tons of illiquid FTT tokens that they cannot sell and which Binance was dumping. Thus, they might have not technically lied. But they were still wrong from the accounting perspective - they surely understood that FTT token cannot be used to cover gaps in large scale. It was the question that matters "how fast you can process user withdrawals and with what risk" Sam owns 8% of Robin Hood that is wort…

> Sam owns 8% of Robin Hood that is worth around ~$1B - he could sell that and cover some of the gap. Not knowing too much about this space have you ever seen anything like this happen? A CEO using their personal wealth to cover their customers funds seems unlikely.

> A CEO using their personal wealth to cover their customers funds seems unlikely.

It’s in the category of “desperately wants to be true” of crypto crash denial.

I’ve been lampooning people defending FTX in Hacker News all day. This is what I come here for!

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#433

Post by andirk »

jrumbut wrote: post #393
ballofrubber wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably a lot of discussion is open to anyone (Bitcoin mailing list, Core github repo), where anyone is free to post their opinion on topics themselves. It is not democratic as in "you have a vote to force others to comply to the majority", but more a democratic in "you can try to convince enough people that the major chain becomes how you like it, while the others run a minority fork". People think "where the money…

This is a terrifying definition of democracy, "you don't get a vote but there is an informal and non-binding channel to lodge complaints." That's not democratic at all!

Democracy can be defined as a popularity contest; democracy does not = good. When I and others say "democratized money", it's not to say it is identical to the definition of democracy as it pertains to a populous voting 1 person 1 vote. More like "money that is not controlled by a single source but rather as large a group as cares to participate who also have access to and knowledge of the tech".

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#434

Post by astrange »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #404
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you see a withdrawal limit, there is no doubt a bank run is occurring This is not accurate. Withdrawal limits are there to control fraud.

Signs on the ATMs of a failing bank explaining that you can only withdraw $500 a day weren't put there due to concerns about fraud.

A failing bank in the US will be taken over by another healthy bank over the weekend (or overnight) with help from the FDIC. You're not really at risk, at least if you're the kind of person who can take their whole account out in cash. The reason they'd put those signs up is that the government doesn't feel like loosening fraud regulations just because there's a bank run on.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#435

Post by Eduard »

nullc wrote: post #410
majani wrote: 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

> a big government supporter such as SBF A supporter or another crook LARPing as pro-regulation because it makes some people ignore red-flags? Constantly braying about the "the law" is part of the the main act of the highest profile scammer claiming to have created Bitcoin. Fact is that saying a lot of vague "pro regulation" things doesn't likely subject you to any additional regulatory scrutiny, it's a free move eve…

> Constantly braying about the "the law" is part of the the main act of the highest profile scammer claiming to have created Bitcoin.

Whom are you alluding to?

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#436

Post by caeril »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #285
majani wrote: 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

That experiment already failed to be honest. Cryptocurrencies were prophesized to get rid of banks. Instead exchanges reinvented banks with all the drawbacks and none of the benefits. Cryptocurrencies were supposed to be in wide circulation just like USD, eliminating the need for fiat on/off ramps. Instead we got these centralized corporations and endless KYC/AML surveillance with none of the regulation and governmen…

No, there's still Monero and ZCash. And most holders do have their own non-custodial wallets. Or at least wallet seeds from intermediaries like MetaMask.

The speculative frenzy with FedCoins like BTC and ETH will obviously fall to baseline, but the true use case for cryptocurrency still exists.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#437

Post by boppo1 »

mamonster wrote: post #49
steveBK123 wrote: post #38

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.

BNPL has already exploded though, but good call. Klarna is down about 90% in the private markets, Affirm about the same from all time high. Another good candidate is "AI-powered" insurance i.e Lemonade.

How do you keep track of private markets? Are you involved in the business?

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#439

Post by astrange »

mamonster wrote: post #66
steveBK123 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZIRP is a hell of a drug. There's not a lot of innovation to be had on lending that is actually going to be considered legal. Unless they obfuscate it with AI, they are going to run afoul of some sort of anti-discriminatory laws. Credit score&history, income, capital.. go. Most of what BNPL actually turned out to be was just dumb money.

Its also the fact that in a bear market / recessions usually most correlations go to 1(on the way down) and whatever risk metric you used previously justify having low default provisions suddenly doesn't work anymore. Wonder whether we will ever see the actual datasets that BNPL founders saw that made them decide it is a safe business. Probably like you said ZIRP,bullmarket delinquency percentages.

Part of the supposed appeal of BNPL is that if the market gets risky, you have much more choice about how much new credit you can offer, since you're free to offer it per-purchase not per-customer.

It makes more sense for a large retailer to run it themselves, though; there's not necessarily any value in a dedicated company selling it straight to customers.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#440

Post by cossatot »

pitt1980 wrote: post #425
bombcar wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least the political ones (some) came about for clarification (JFK and RFK are both Kennedies, GWB is to distinguish from "Bush"). Others come from their names being long or hard to remember/pronounce/spell (I suspect this is what happened with AOC).

The Robert Caro books about Lyndon B Johnson detail his effort to force meme “LBJ” as a reference to him. (Mostly in terms of insisting various communications employees use it in press releases and what not). It seems he liked the iconography of it, especially in putting himself in similar company to FDR. Both his daughters have the LBJ initials, his wife is mostly known as Lady Bird Johnson (a nickname that predates…

OT: Are those books worth reading? I loved the Power Broker but the LBJ books are a whole lot to get through.
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