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Binance to acquire FTX

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651–660 of 790 posts

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#651
post #623

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.

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.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#652
post #605

Earlier 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.

Well, that's what the 'shadow' in 'shadow bank' means: less/different regulation than a normal bank.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, btw.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#653
post #602

Earlier 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.

If you have enough assets, everything can show up, and you just buy them out.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#654
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.

Do keep in mind that there's a difference between liquidity and insolvency.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#655

Earlier 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

[deleted]

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Market manipulation is not exactly business 101.

I'm not sure this is market manipulation?

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#657

Earlier 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.

P. T. Barnum doesn't deserve the bad reputation. See eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=310056

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#658
post #651
post #623

Earlier 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.

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.

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#659
post #489

Earlier 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.

Agreed

Re: Binance to acquire FTX

#660
post #651

Earlier 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.

As long as noone is being lied to, I don't see any problems.

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.

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