Binance is trying to calm investors, but its finances remain a mystery • Hacker News Board

Re: Binance is trying to calm investors, but its finances remain a mystery

#121

Post by jcpham2 » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 9:23 AM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #69

jrm4 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core idea does not work for many, if not most, of the things people have promised it can work for -- but that's very different from "doesn't work." I'd say it's still a pretty strong contender not for "cash in hand" but for a better "money in your mattress."

So the only use cases so far are pleasing paranoid schizos, ransomware, and scams? Cash in your mattress is likely much safer than in your bitcoin wallet.

What if I can’t decide which is better so I further diversify into both?

Re: Binance is trying to calm investors, but its finances remain a mystery

#122

Post by obert » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 9:25 AM UTC

Binance is a scam. They make it extremely hard to withdraw money, with errors, fake limits, unresponsive customer support.

Re: Binance is trying to calm investors, but its finances remain a mystery

#123

Post by ls15 » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 9:27 AM UTC

rkagerer wrote: post #84

Gigachad wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just can't see how crypto can recover tbh. What other technology spent ten years, produced basically nothing of value, is almost universally hated by the whole population and then came back to be something useful? It's not like quantum computing where we just don't know how to make it work. There are close to no technical problems, the core idea just doesn't work.

almost universally hated by the whole population Can you source that? It feels to me like a gross exaggeration. Anecdotally I know more people that are passionate about it or just don't care than anyone who really hates it.

I could be lead to believe that if my main source of information were HN comments.

Re: Binance is trying to calm investors, but its finances remain a mystery

#124

Post by voyager1 » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 9:28 AM UTC

It amazes me how confident the comments against and in favor of crypto/Binance are. It is very likely that you don't have appropriate knowledge or don't have access to critical information as to why something is the way it is.

The youtube link posted below is supposedly revealing irregularities with the audit, but the basic knowledge of how the blockchains work invalidates the irregularities. The claim is that the audit is missing a bunch of wallets and coins, but they don't understand that BSC, ETH and BTC wallets also hold other coins, not just BNB, ETH and BTC (e.g. ETH and BSC wallets can hold basically any coin and even BTC wallet can actually hold USDT/TETHER).

Unless you work at Binance and have access to all the financials, your guess is basically a coin flip wether they are solvent or not.

As an example, a few weeks ago crypto.com was said to be insolvent and there was a bank run [1] [2], however nothing collapsed. As always, be cautios, not your keys, not your coins, but I would definitely not bet (short) that they would collapse.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. “ – Mark Twain

For fellow technological enthusiasts, an interesting innovation from Binance: they generated the merkle tree where any Binance user can independently self verify his assets within the platform [3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33590579

[2] https://twitter.com/marionawfal/status/1591803227003129858

[3] https://www.binance.com/en/proof-of-reserves

Re: Binance is trying to calm investors, but its finances remain a mystery

#125

Post by flakeoil » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 9:33 AM UTC

voyager1 wrote: post #124

It amazes me how confident the comments against and in favor of crypto/Binance are. It is very likely that you don't have appropriate knowledge or don't have access to critical information as to why something is the way it is. The youtube link posted below is supposedly revealing irregularities with the audit, but the basic knowledge of how the blockchains work invalidates the irregularities. The claim is that the au…

"Unless you work at Binance and have access to all the financials, your guess is basically a coin flip wether they are solvent or not."

This is one of the reason why Binance should be regulated properly or closed down.

Re: Binance is trying to calm investors, but its finances remain a mystery

#126

Post by _5uxp » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 9:37 AM UTC

coopierez wrote: post #112

rkagerer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

almost universally hated by the whole population Can you source that? It feels to me like a gross exaggeration. Anecdotally I know more people that are passionate about it or just don't care than anyone who really hates it.

8% of (American) people have a positive view, 43% have a negative view. The rest don't care or are neutral. So although not a majority, it's pretty close. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/07/just-8percent-of-americans-h...

Public majority have no way of understanding anything important. Even it's good for their health or wealth etc. So many historical example out there.

Re: Binance is trying to calm investors, but its finances remain a mystery

#127

Post by 2sk21 » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 9:45 AM UTC

shapefrog wrote: post #105

TimJRobinson wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine thinking an industry worth $800B, with 200M users, transferring billions of dollars a day, is "hated by the whole population". You really live in a bubble

Imagine thinking an industry worth $0.00 is worth $800B. You really live in a bubble

The crypto "industry" is a set of people selling Pet Rocks to each other

Re: Binance is trying to calm investors, but its finances remain a mystery

#128

Post by rawoke083600 » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 10:02 AM UTC

tibbydudeza wrote: post #114

South African affiliate - oh dear - let's just the accounting profession in South Africa is generally found to be wanting after several scandals they missed out on or were complicit in.

Compared to say USA ?

Re: Binance is trying to calm investors, but its finances remain a mystery

#129

Post by dhruval » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 10:07 AM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #4

From TFA: > The reserve report, released Wednesday, is a five-page letter from a partner at the South African affiliate of the global accounting firm Mazars. It contained three numbers. The letter wasn’t an audit report, didn’t address the effectiveness of the company’s internal financial-reporting controls, and said Mazars did “not express an opinion or an assurance conclusion,” meaning it wasn’t vouching for the nu…

Former auditor here:

1. That is standard wording for the report of "agreed upon procedures". This is not an audit it just means they only did a certain set of procedures rather than an audit.

2. Audits aren't really able to detect all fraud, especially if the management is sophisticated. But if the fraud results in obvious material discrepancies then the audit would catch it and the auditor would resign (unless they are corrupt in which case you end up with Enron where a Big 5 auditor was complicit, so now we have the Big 4).

3. In the Binance case, the obvious weird thing is they only did these very limited agreed upon procedures on 'Bitcoin', but other crypto currencies they claim to hold were not verified at the same time. Also their other liabilities are not verified.

(As some examples: they could have some non-BTC liabilities to offset the Bitcoin or CZ moved some personal bitcoin to wallets or converted some other holdings, all sorts of possibilities. Would be hard to hide from a full audit but in this case very easy to hide. )

Re: Binance is trying to calm investors, but its finances remain a mystery

#130

Post by Gigachad » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 10:07 AM UTC

netheril96 wrote: post #120

Gigachad wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just can't see how crypto can recover tbh. What other technology spent ten years, produced basically nothing of value, is almost universally hated by the whole population and then came back to be something useful? It's not like quantum computing where we just don't know how to make it work. There are close to no technical problems, the core idea just doesn't work.

> is almost universally hated by the whole population Haters do not move the market at all, unless they are willing to short the coins. Only the participants, whatever their intentions are, move the market.

Eventually to sustain the value, crypto has move past hype and be actually used for something. If regular people won't use it to buy coffee or store money, eventually the trading bots shuffling billions of imaginary tokens around won't cut it.