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Binance freezes withdrawals of stablecoin USDC as investors pull $2B

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Re: Binance freezes withdrawals of stablecoin USDC as investors pull $2B

#51

Post by jaltekruse »

Octokiddie wrote: post #22

> The world's biggest crypto exchange will freeze all withdrawals of USD Coin while it conducts a "token swap" to boost its holdings of the dollar-pegged cryptocurrency, the crypto group's CEO Changpeng Zhao said Tuesday It's worth noting that USDC is not even a token controlled by Binance. It's controlled and issued by Circle. So effectively, Binance is refusing to honor its commitment to depositors to give them the…

I think there is an important missing part of this argument that many of the current paths to move dollars around that network in the traditional system take either days to settle and/or cost quite a lot in fees. I see crypto having potential to optimize lots of things and introduce extra trust from a technical infrastructure standpoint. Right now my traditional money is sitting in several digital banks or brokerages that I have no idea how well made they are underneath, I just see a website I can interact with. Crypto doesn't solve problems about where the coins meet the real world, even a stable coin with publicly auditable holdings to back it can have secret debt leveraged against those assets. Those problems seem only possible to resolve with regulation as it has been with the traditional financial system, but standardizing protocols to move money around and reducing lead time and/or fees as crypto evolves could really help the financial system be more flexible. With everyone carrying around a smartphone it really should make us question why so much money needs to move through the major credit card networks, we don't need their special hardware anymore.

Re: Binance freezes withdrawals of stablecoin USDC as investors pull $2B

#52

Post by tnel77 »

echelon wrote: post #27
tnel77 wrote: post #23

“Crypto sucks. This is proof.” Exchanges going under proves that people are greedy and/or stupid, but it doesn’t inherently mean every crypto project is bad. It doesn’t seem like people holding their own keys are having a bad time right now. Sure, prices of these assets are down, but a hardware wallet is an easy way to make sure your assets don’t end up being given away during a bankruptcy proceeding.

After all of this fallout, the only people left that will even touch crypto will be the ones that understand how to set up and use a hardware wallet. I don't think that will be a very large market.

Perhaps. I’m guessing that the sting will wear off and newcomers will venture into crypto sometime in the future. I personally view these crashes as a necessary cleansing since so many scam/meme projects get created every go around.

Re: Binance freezes withdrawals of stablecoin USDC as investors pull $2B

#53

Post by quags »

hall0ween wrote: post #32
RobLach wrote: post #20

The moment you halt withdrawals, the jig is up.

I'm no crypto expert here, admittedly. Isn't the point of decentralization to avoid this level of control? It's like the crypto 'investor' response is "Decentralization...that's not so important. What we really want is sheer, unaltered speculation."

Nothing prevents being decentralized and continuing that route but it requires more knowledge , it is harder , still has risk and crypto would not be as large with out the central players. Centralized and regulated crypto exchanges keeping the ability to have decentralized wallets is the best of both worlds. That is the way this is going barring making it illegal to hold your own wallet or sending decentralized payments which certainly isn’t an impossible scenario.

Re: Binance freezes withdrawals of stablecoin USDC as investors pull $2B

#54

Post by WalterSear »

hall0ween wrote: post #32
RobLach wrote: post #20

The moment you halt withdrawals, the jig is up.

I'm no crypto expert here, admittedly. Isn't the point of decentralization to avoid this level of control? It's like the crypto 'investor' response is "Decentralization...that's not so important. What we really want is sheer, unaltered speculation."

That's not the point. It's the beard.

Re: Binance freezes withdrawals of stablecoin USDC as investors pull $2B

#55

Post by concinds »

hall0ween wrote: post #32
RobLach wrote: post #20

The moment you halt withdrawals, the jig is up.

I'm no crypto expert here, admittedly. Isn't the point of decentralization to avoid this level of control? It's like the crypto 'investor' response is "Decentralization...that's not so important. What we really want is sheer, unaltered speculation."

The decentralised technologies are still groundbreaking and trustworthy. But you can’t market that, so it doesn’t get adopted. The lowest common denominator goes for the stuff that’s heavily advertised, like centralised exchanges (scams), stablecoins (scams), and leveraged retail investing (scam). If Tom Brady got paid to make an ad, surely that means the product is trustworthy?! You can’t fight human stupidity.

Re: Binance freezes withdrawals of stablecoin USDC as investors pull $2B

#57

Post by tnel77 »

anon291 wrote: post #28
tnel77 wrote: post #23

“Crypto sucks. This is proof.” Exchanges going under proves that people are greedy and/or stupid, but it doesn’t inherently mean every crypto project is bad. It doesn’t seem like people holding their own keys are having a bad time right now. Sure, prices of these assets are down, but a hardware wallet is an easy way to make sure your assets don’t end up being given away during a bankruptcy proceeding.

> doesn’t seem like people holding their own keys are having a bad time right now Considering that, instead of owning productive assets that make society better as a whole and provide real value to people, they own tokens that so far do nothing and are only useful due to the exchanges, then yes... that's a pretty bad time.

There’s no denying that people “hodling” projects like “DickCoin” are probably having a bad time. I’d suspect that people who invested in more sound projects (Bitcoin and Ethereum, for example) might do just fine in a few years.

Re: Binance freezes withdrawals of stablecoin USDC as investors pull $2B

#58

Post by capableweb »

Octokiddie wrote: post #22

> The world's biggest crypto exchange will freeze all withdrawals of USD Coin while it conducts a "token swap" to boost its holdings of the dollar-pegged cryptocurrency, the crypto group's CEO Changpeng Zhao said Tuesday It's worth noting that USDC is not even a token controlled by Binance. It's controlled and issued by Circle. So effectively, Binance is refusing to honor its commitment to depositors to give them the…

Not saying the rest of your comment is right or wrong but this part sticks out:

> It's traded the world over by almost every country whether they want to or not. You can buy almost anything there is to buy with US dollars.

That's definitely not true. Most places in the world, I'd wager, do not accept USD, as you seem to think. I can't even begin to count the times I've seen clueless American tourists in South America, Africa, Europe and Asia trying to pay with their "highly regarded" USD and being denied with laughs. And then being shocked at the results.

Re: Binance freezes withdrawals of stablecoin USDC as investors pull $2B

#59

Post by jaltekruse »

jaltekruse wrote: post #51
Octokiddie wrote: post #22

> The world's biggest crypto exchange will freeze all withdrawals of USD Coin while it conducts a "token swap" to boost its holdings of the dollar-pegged cryptocurrency, the crypto group's CEO Changpeng Zhao said Tuesday It's worth noting that USDC is not even a token controlled by Binance. It's controlled and issued by Circle. So effectively, Binance is refusing to honor its commitment to depositors to give them the…

I think there is an important missing part of this argument that many of the current paths to move dollars around that network in the traditional system take either days to settle and/or cost quite a lot in fees. I see crypto having potential to optimize lots of things and introduce extra trust from a technical infrastructure standpoint. Right now my traditional money is sitting in several digital banks or brokerages…

Unfortunately the current (and seemingly somewhat inevitable) architecture of cryptocurrency, relies on trustless distributed systems, which I don't see a clear path to making them give similar SLAs or UX to the traditional system with centralized authorities and defenses against "double spending", which really just isn't discussed outside of crypto because it was such an obvious thing to solve for our current system makes it so close to impossible (and that is part of the reason for the lead times discussed in my previous comment).

Re: Binance freezes withdrawals of stablecoin USDC as investors pull $2B

#60

Post by wpietri »

Octokiddie wrote: post #22

> The world's biggest crypto exchange will freeze all withdrawals of USD Coin while it conducts a "token swap" to boost its holdings of the dollar-pegged cryptocurrency, the crypto group's CEO Changpeng Zhao said Tuesday It's worth noting that USDC is not even a token controlled by Binance. It's controlled and issued by Circle. So effectively, Binance is refusing to honor its commitment to depositors to give them the…

> US dollar-like liquidity and value preservation without US dollar financial regulation.

Or in other words, they'd like the benefits of regulation without the costs of regulation. Which I certainly appreciate. As a child my plan for adulthood was desserts all the time, no vegetables ever.

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