FTX held less than $1B in liquid assets against $9B in liabilities

It's a smart contract that you can add any type of owner to (regular wallet, hardware wallet, anything that can sign for transactions), then you specify how many of the owners need to sign for transactions.

Banks are required by law to have regulatory capital[1] and reserves[2] in order to stay liquid and solvent.

Longer explanation: "The reserves only provide liquidity to cover withdrawals within the normal pattern. Banks and the central bank expect that in normal circumstances only a proportion of deposits will be withdrawn at the same time, and that the reserves will be sufficient to meet the demand for cash. However, banks routinely find themselves in a shortfall situation or may experience an unexpected bank run, when depositors wish to withdraw more funds than the reserves held by the bank. In that event, the bank experiencing the liquidity shortfall may routinely borrow short-term funds in the interbank lending market from banks with a surplus. In exceptional situations, the central bank may provide funds to cover the short-term shortfall as lender of last resort. When the bank liquidity problem exceeds the central bank’s lender of last resort resources, as happened during the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, the government may try to restore confidence in the banking system, for example, by providing government guarantees[2]."

If commercial bank is in trouble other commercial banks will try to help but if they can not help, central bank will try to help and if that is not possible government will step in.

All in all, banking industry is tightly regulated and somewhat safe especially after 2007 fiasco.

In the case of FTX, Binance said they would step in but they gave up. If FTX is profitable they can gradually loan money from private sector(banks, investment funds etc.) then start to repay their liabilities and eventually return loans.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_requirement

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

Everyone could withdraw all their money at the same time. What happens then? The answer is bank run. There will literally not be enough cash to do it. The entire system is running on the fact that everyone has not done that yet.

Personally, I want to have it happen, just to force the system to come to terms with the fact that it isn't all just about numbers, and so that people can actually materially witness the sheer magnitude of monetary centralization created by our system.

Fuck the inconvenience. If Mammon is going to fucking rule, let everyone see it's rictus. Let everyone take in what it looks like.

The inherent "value" of it outside it's physical properties is as much of a human construct based on trust as the dollar.

as always, the biggest risk to your cryptocurrency at an exchange is ... the exchange actively or passively stealing all your money. this has been the case for the entire history of cryptocurrency exchanges.