Live data from Hacker News

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

markets.businessinsider.com

241–250 of 309 posts

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

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like they trusted two (well actually three if you count US gov) centralized entities instead of one. It's like asking permission from both momma and pappa to eat desert. They should have just depended on the single entity backing USDC rather than putting themselves in a situation where they'd be also be fucked if Binance froze by leaving their tokens on exchange. When you put USD backed stablecoin on exchange yo…

> America decided dollars should float in the 70s, and most of the world followed. Except that a bunch of countries in Europe went back to pegged currency with the Euro[1]. Part of the reason the 2008 crisis hit countries like Italy, Greece, and Ireland so hard. --- 1. Yes - the Euro is not technically pegged; but effectively, it's the same thing. Each individual country in the Eurozone can't engage in independent mo…

What are you talking about? The euro is NOT pegged and your last sentence doesnt change that.

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in Oregon and New Hampshire tend not to have very strong affection for their state. This sounds like the opinion of a European who has never actually lived in the US. People are much more married to their states than it seems that you'd believe.

And even moreso to their cultural regions. While someone from (say) Connecticut might not think much of moving to Maine, they would probably feel different about moving to Iowa, Washington, or Alabama. Here's one of the various maps I've seen of US cultural regions: [0] It seems to be accurate for the areas I know anything about; I can't speak for it in other places. [0] https://preview.redd.it/ntsqzyp8uq531.png?auto…

Just bringing your stuff with you from one state to another could make you a felon, making people very locked in from moving across certain states. Someone in Idaho would become a felon for bringing their (Idaho legal) AR-15 into California while the person in California would become a felon for bringing their (California legal) weed plant into Idaho.

A lot of these states have backdoor ways of keeping out culturally incompatible folks from moving state to state by making mere victimless possession of certain items disproportionately linked to certain American cultures into felonies.

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

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stablecoins have totally valid use cases in the crypto ecosystem that don’t involve skirting regulations. People want something that isn’t volatile. It takes days to deposit and withdraw actual USD from exchanges and requires centralized entities that charge fees (or are totally untrustworthy as we’ve seen). Contracts and dapps can hold and interact with USDC to create useful applications that aren’t just speculative…

Morgan Stanley ised to take a couple of days as well to wire Euros to my bank account. Never ever was that an issue, or something I wanted to solve by using an almast-but-not-really Euro, or Dollar.

And that's entirely on them, international bank transfers within the EU take mere moments now.

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

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not really any less of a dollar than any other dollar is. All of our digital dollars are just bank liabilities. Circle and Tether are just banks with dollar liabilities. Their liabilities can be transferred on crypto networks rather than traditional bank wires.

It is less of a dollar, because I can say you can exchange it for a dollar when you can not, in fact, exchange it for a dollar when you try to,because I never had enough(or any) dollars. In the real world when the bank runs out of dollars the government will give me dollars instead.

> In the real world when the bank runs out of dollars the government will give me dollars instead.

Up to a point.

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

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, it's just like the deposits on FTX, or the reserves of Tether right?

FTX international was not regulated and Tether is debt backed. So no it's not like either of those things.

Binance is regulated where exactly? Can you please point me to the jurisdiction where it's offices are located, so I can instruct my lawyers to send them some papers? Just asking in case something happens in the future.

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

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not your key, not your crypto.

Definitely, but why would they not be able to submit a txn to the chain to move a token balance "because bank closed" ??

Because the tokens aren't there. The web UI says they are but what's on the chain? You don't know because you don't have the keys. Hence my previous comment.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So effectively, Binance is refusing to honor its commitment to depositors to give them their money on demand. That's called a "default." What? So if I go into the bank at 4 AM and ask to withdraw $100,000, and they respond, "Sure, we'll need a few hours to get those funds together," the bank has defaulted?

Cash withdrawls have a ohysical aspect, cash. In the case of Binance, there is no such aspect. Obviously, banks have limits around cash withdrawls not the least due to limited amount of cash at hand at a given sight. Banks will happily allow you to wire transfer money wherever you want, since this is only a virtuap things and banks are required to have enough liquidity to serve those requests. Crypto is no like cash.

If I understand the Binance situation correctly they do not claim to be holding USDC for you, if you give them USDC then they convert it to their BUSD token (also a stable coin) and that's what's listed on your account. So when you withdraw your BUSD to USDC, they may have to go buy some USDC to actual service your withdrawal.

I don't use them, I'm going off of this page: https://www.binance.com/en/support/faq/what-is-busd-auto-con...

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

#250
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically these people are trying to get the benefit of digital currencies without the downside of volatility. Somebody else will have to take the volatility risk. This is easy to do when the crypto currencies are going up in value, and almost impossible to do on the downside.

> almost impossible to do on the downside And yet most stable coins have maintained their peg for years now, despite many of them having gone through 2 large bear markets. If 80%-90% down and still pegged doesn't disprove "impossible to do on the downside" I don't know what could. Clarification: I do think Tether is not fully backed and is likely to depeg some day , but the assertion that it's "impossible to do on th…

> I do think Tether is not fully backed and is likely to depeg some day.

Which is a good reason to get out. Stablecoins have only two stable points, 1 and 0. When they crash, they go all the way. Look at what happened with the stablecoins that already crashed.

Post reply on HN