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Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

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Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#361

Post by tsimionescu »

0xedd wrote: post #341
raincole wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto's fate is bound be like those alternative Reddits and Twitters. What kind of users an alternative Reddit attracts? 1. People who don't like Reddit because of privacy concerns or other ideological reasons. 2. People who are banned by Reddit. It turns out group 2 is much larger than group 1 and the community rots. Now what kind of people who cryptos (a.k.a. alternative money) attract? 1. People who don't like ba…

The banking industry makes 25 times more profit than all other industries around the world combined. It has no competition and abuses this fact. Isn't it interesting how little awareness this issue has?

An industry, by definition, can't have competition. The soft drinks industry also has no competition - if you want soft drinks, you have to buy from them.

Competition happens inside an industry. And there is fierce competition between banks, much more so than in many other modern industries (e.g. there is much more competition than in tech).

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#362

Post by rvz »

TheDudeMan wrote: post #170
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more the failure of the crypto community over the past 14 years to develop a use for crypto beyond speculation and crime.

It works well for sending money across the world. Seems like a nice thing to be able to do.

Exactly. For example there is this with Stellar [0] which is certainly a use case for sending money across the world into crypto wallets, same day, near instant and very low fees.

But most HNers here are not begging for donations, or suffering from starvation or are currently at war (Ukraine) or not experiencing hyperinflation (Argentina) and are not the ones who experienced their bank accounts getting locked after protesting against their government (Canada).

But never-mind. But a clear pattern I’ve seen on HN is that they only care as long as it directly affects them. (For example, look at the herd reaction about the Bob Lee situation in San Francisco [1])

Since they are not experiencing all of the above and are comfortably sitting in their chairs browsing on this site on their computers, why would they care about crypto use-cases since it doesn’t affect their luxuries, yet?

[0] https://stellar.org/moneygram

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#363

Post by tsimionescu »

derefr wrote: post #206
jrmg wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other kinds of ‘crypto gaming company’ _could_ there be?

Steam but where you actually own, and so can resell, your game licenses. And where other supply-side companies can take over providing the game-download-delivery logistics if the original company providing that service goes belly-up. Or: Pokemon, but you can trade the pokemon outside the game itself; and the game can prove that your competitive mon were authentically caught and raised, rather than hacked in, because…

Any way of making real money out of game mechanics (selling Pokémon, cashing out in-game currency) instantly turns your game into (a) gambling (assuming you have any kind of randomness at all, which virtually all games do), and (b) a Mecca for bots, scammers, gold farmers etc. Someone losing their account is no longer losing just some in-game items, they are losing real money, which gets the police involved real quick.

Diablo 3 actually did this exact thing at launch with the real money auction house. Shockingly, they didn't need crypto to do so! But it also didn't make them too many friends, and they had to pull it down a year or two later.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#364

Post by Noughmad »

lvl102 wrote: post #36

Bitcoin solves this. Sorry I just had to. I think crypto as an investable asset class is finished. SEC is sending a very clear signal here. It’s entirely the community’s fault for failing to properly manage this space. They actually earned public’s trust (sometime during the pandemic). And then they threw it all away for a few bucks.

Bitcoin would solve this, if it was actually used (or fit to be used) as intended - people keeping their own wallets and making on-chain transaction.

However, because it is so poorly designed, almost nobody does that, and instead store their crypto in exchanges. Which have all the downsides of banks (they can hold your money hostage) but none of the upsides (security and regulation).

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#365

Post by FabHK »

nroets wrote: post #241
raincole wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto's fate is bound be like those alternative Reddits and Twitters. What kind of users an alternative Reddit attracts? 1. People who don't like Reddit because of privacy concerns or other ideological reasons. 2. People who are banned by Reddit. It turns out group 2 is much larger than group 1 and the community rots. Now what kind of people who cryptos (a.k.a. alternative money) attract? 1. People who don't like ba…

Crypto is used to circumvent capital controls: In other words to create a free market in foreign exchange for countries that ban it. Crypto is also used to evade taxes. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's not as bad as dealing drugs or scamming people.

Yes, that’s the crypto use case. Make a ledger a billion times less efficient than an ordinary ledger, so that you can circumvent regulations (until the regulator catches up).

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#366

Post by siwatanejo »

Animats wrote: post #340
bibabaloo wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is it https://lnp2pbot.com/

Ah. That's helpful. It's peer to peer, but not trustless. There's a moment in the transaction at which one party can default. So they need a reputation and dispute resolution system.[1] You'd think there would be trustless decentralized exchanges by now. Ones have been proposed.[2] Some even exist. It's possible to have a truly trustless exchange where orders are smart contracts on a blockchain, transactions are atom…

Sorry but, do you know exactly what trustless means?

This concept applies to custody, not to fiat-to-crypto exchanges. Because a fiat-to-crypto exchange is an on/off ramp into/outside crypto. And as fiat cannot be held in a trustless way, the most "trustless" way to make a swap without the exchange holding the fiat amount is by using an escrow system. If the escrow system can only be moved to party A or party B during a trade-dispute, then it's the most trustless thing you can get, my friend.

PS: Your 2nd link seems to suggest that you're saying "DEXes are better than p2p exchanges!", well, DEXes don't have fiat-to-crypto pairs, only crypto-to-crypto. Nice try.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#367

Post by tsimionescu »

bboygravity wrote: post #352
lvl102 wrote: post #36

Bitcoin solves this. Sorry I just had to. I think crypto as an investable asset class is finished. SEC is sending a very clear signal here. It’s entirely the community’s fault for failing to properly manage this space. They actually earned public’s trust (sometime during the pandemic). And then they threw it all away for a few bucks.

That's like saying that the days of the US dollar are numbered because Bernie Madoff got caught. Makes no sense at all to me.

If Bernie Madoff had been responsible for the vast majority of dollar trading in the world, then people might make those comments when he was shut down.

How much of crypto is collectively going through FTX, Binance, and Coinbase? If they are really shut down, especially in a way where it's clear their business model will not be tolerated in the USA (so no one will take their place), how much will that pull down on the whole ecosystem?

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#368

Post by siwatanejo »

Eisenstein wrote: post #272
siwatanejo wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do I get some Bitcoin? There are bitcoin-only exchanges, e.g. Bitaroo. There are also P2P exchanges that don't hold user's funds, like LN2bot (this one is very handy because it supports Lightning, so fees are ridiculously low, and trades very fast for not being a SPOT exchange). > I can't afford to mine it anymore. Right, it's a professional industry now; hobbyists can still do it, but at a loss. > What if I wa…

> Anything, really. I tried to bring my bitcoin to the grocery store to buy some brownie mix and cheese slices but they wouldn't take any coins from my Trezor.

Wrong grocery store man, how about choose one located in El Salvador.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#369

Post by tsimionescu »

siwatanejo wrote: post #237
glitchc wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I get some Bitcoin? I can't afford to mine it anymore. What if I want to buy some more? Or sell some of what I have? What can I spend Bitcoin on? What does Bitcoin solve for me?

> How do I get some Bitcoin? There are bitcoin-only exchanges, e.g. Bitaroo. There are also P2P exchanges that don't hold user's funds, like LN2bot (this one is very handy because it supports Lightning, so fees are ridiculously low, and trades very fast for not being a SPOT exchange). > I can't afford to mine it anymore. Right, it's a professional industry now; hobbyists can still do it, but at a loss. > What if I wa…

> not being affected by QE in the medium-long term (e.g. put your savings in it and forget about for 4 years[2]

Sure, why care about the possibility that cashing out early might mean you lose half your money? Trust instead in the long long long history of BTC as a stable currency.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#370

Post by balls187 »

water554 wrote: post #274
nroets wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is used to circumvent capital controls: In other words to create a free market in foreign exchange for countries that ban it. Crypto is also used to evade taxes. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's not as bad as dealing drugs or scamming people.

Why is dealing drugs bad? Bringing hard to obtain product to customers who want and will pay for it.

Bad—depends a lot on the circumstances.

Regular tax paying people who want to alter their mind; ok.

But also customers who break the law in order to pay for drugs.

And when and where is it okay to deal? Personally I would not want drug addicts frequenting any place where I am trying to live.

Then what about the product they sell: supplied by violent cartels? No thanks.

Designer drugs laced with who knows what manufactured in an overseas lab? Again no.

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