Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Customer deposits should meet liabilities 1:1. If they don't, somebody is lying. That’s not how banking works. You hold illiquid assets. Sometimes they move in price. If they move enough in price you’re insolvent. Limiting bank runs is a genuinely hard problem.
Exchanges aren't banks, and crypto exchanges especially shouldn't be banks. Crypto is liquid and can be redeemed in its own denomination instantly if you hold it in a simple wallet. That's what exchanges should be doing. They shouldn't be doing fractional reserve banking, and a run shouldn't be possible. Preventing runs on a crypto exchange is exceedingly easy if the operators aren't taking risks with client funds.
Binance to acquire FTX
651–660 of 790 posts
Re: Binance to acquire FTX
#652Earlier quoted context omitted.
that makes FTX a "shadow bank", not merely an exchange.
It's worse than "shadow bank". It's bank who is allowed to print money at its whims and create any arbitrary leverage it wants.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, btw.
Re: Binance to acquire FTX
#653Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their point is that if you have the money to buy $1.1B of something off market, you should also have the money to buy $1.1B of something on market. Any time someone posts an ask at or below $22, you simply fill the order.
beyond the fact that the dynamics of saying "we'll take everything at a certain price up to $1.1B" will likely lead to much more than that showing up on the market and leading to a price crash anyways... I imagine that an off market transaction can involve things like not sending $1.1B in cash to the other person the same day.
Re: Binance to acquire FTX
#654Binance 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.
Re: Binance to acquire FTX
#655Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Leaving Jane Street to become a Billionaire seems like a weird criticism
Re: Binance to acquire FTX
#656Re: Binance to acquire FTX
#657Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Because they think the people they're most similar to are respected old-school hackers (rms, jwz, etc.) instead of carnival hucksters like P. T. Barnum.
Re: Binance to acquire FTX
#658Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exchanges aren't banks, and crypto exchanges especially shouldn't be banks. Crypto is liquid and can be redeemed in its own denomination instantly if you hold it in a simple wallet. That's what exchanges should be doing. They shouldn't be doing fractional reserve banking, and a run shouldn't be possible. Preventing runs on a crypto exchange is exceedingly easy if the operators aren't taking risks with client funds.
Well, it seems the word 'exchange' in this case is used with a different meaning when applied to FTX than the meaning you have in mind.
This should be illegal, and people who do this should go to jail.
Customer funds should be 1 to 1 backed with assets.
Re: Binance to acquire FTX
#659Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pedantic nit: Those are initialisms. An initialism is when the individual letters are individually pronounced, like "emm-bee-ess." An acronym is when the initial letters are pronounced as a word, e.g. SOAR ("Situation Options Act Review-and-Reassess")
If there's one thing I really dislike about HN culture, it's the consistent derailing of a thread to "um, actually" someone on a semantics distinction that literally nobody has ever been confused by, or to shoehorn in new terminology that doesn't improve communication in any way.
Re: Binance to acquire FTX
#660Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it seems the word 'exchange' in this case is used with a different meaning when applied to FTX than the meaning you have in mind.
Which is exactly the problem. This should be illegal, and people who do this should go to jail. Customer funds should be 1 to 1 backed with assets.
Case A, tell your customers that their funds have asset backing, and have asset backing: fine.
Case B: tell your customers that their funds have no asset backing, and have no asset backing: fine. (Those customers deserve what they get.)
Case C: tell your customers nothing, and do whatever you feel like: fine. (Those customers deserve what they get.)
Case D: tell your customers that their funds have asset back, and have no asset backing: bad.