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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

#441

Post by batmenace »

darawk wrote: post #437

Lots of things are scams in crypto, but Binance is not one of them. The allegations that they misappropriated user funds in any material way are absurd. They didn't. They have never had any serious problems meeting redemptions or withdrawals in any of their products, and despite this lawsuit dropping and the asset freeze being granted by the court, still aren't. If they were insolvent, withdrawals would have been fro…

> They didn't.

How would you know? How would we know without actually auditing their books?

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

#442

Post by ahtihn »

siwatanejo wrote: post #422
ahtihn wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does everyone always compare BTC to USD when it comes to "holding". That's not the only alternative! You're not supposed to hold large amounts of USD over long time periods. It loses value by design . You're supposed to put excess money to more productive uses, e.g. invest it. No one ever suggests using some S&P500 ETF shares as money even though it also trends up vs the USD. Just like BTC it's also more volatile…

Except that BTC has outperformed S&P500 for years.

That's not the point. You can cherry pick stocks that have outperformed the S&P500 too.

The point is that USD isn't for holding. It's for spending. BTC is more like a stock or asset than money. Money isn't supposed to be volatile and it's not supposed to appreciate in value.

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

#443

Post by senttoschool »

MrPatan wrote: post #434
senttoschool wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The banking industry makes 25 times more profit than all other industries around the world combined. And that's why Apple is worth 6x more than JP Morgan Chase?

Banks don't like to give money back to shareholders, they keep it for the bankers. Why would you buy bank shares?

Do you have source for that?

What is the return on profits in the banking industry compared to tech, oil, etc.?

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

#444

Post by [deleted] »

TheDong wrote: post #382
Animats wrote: post #318

This SEC action has nothing to do with Binance being a crypto exchange. It has to do with it being an exchange, a broker, an asset custodian, a market maker, and a trader for its own account, all at once, with no regulation. Sam Bankman-Fried was lobbying Congress to make that legal. That plan went nowhere. Binance just assumed they could get away doing all that. Worse, the SEC has already found large transfers out o…

> This SEC action has nothing to do with Binance being a crypto exchange The SEC press release ( https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-101 ) includes a section titled "UNREGISTERED OFFER AND SALE OF CRYPTO ASSETS". The SEC also filed https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-102 against coinbase. The coinbase one makes it much more clear that yes, in fact, just being a crypto exchange is the same as being an…

[deleted]

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

#445

Post by petesergeant »

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.

> It works well for sending money across the world

What is “well” here?

Using Wise or similar almost always ends up cheaper and faster when you factor in the need to go to/from fiat, and the chances that you’ll fat-finger the transfer and lose your money, get difficult questions from your bank, or that Wise will collapse with your balance are much reduced as compared to using crypto for this.

If you’re trying to evade capital controls, however immoral you may consider them, well that’s something different.

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

#446

Post by Tuna-Fish »

TheDong wrote: post #393
Animats wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are legal crypto exchanges in the US. Gemini, for one.[1] They're a trust company, regulated as a bank by New York State.[2] [1] https://www.gemini.com/ [2] https://dfs.ny.gov/apps_and_licensing/banks_and_trusts/comme...

The SEC certainly thinks gemini is running an illegal exchange, and said so quite clearly when charging them of that earlier this year: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-7 The case has not been dropped, and I think pretty clearly states the SEC's opinion, which is quite consistent with what I said above. It is not legal to run a crypto exchange in the US (under current security laws I should add).

This is only true if you trade in crypto that is a security.

Notably, Bitcoin is not a security. But every stablecoin, or any other more complex system that is in some way related to something that exists in the real world is.

So you could run a Bitcoin exchange, but if you add any of the new, complex stuff you will end up getting shut down by SEC.

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

#447

Post by Eisenstein »

yuvadam wrote: post #433
Noughmad wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

What aspects of bitcoin do you perceive as being "poorly designed"?

* Deflationary by design

* Early adopters disproportionately end up in control of majority of coins (currently 0.03% of wallets own 59% of all bitcoins)

* Proof-of-work is wasteful

* Chain is very inefficient

* Loss of coins with loss of wallet means, for one, that inheriting the coins is not possible unless special precautions are taken which undo a lot of the security

* Other libertarian nonsense that shows very naive understanding of economics that I can't think of at the moment

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

#448

Post by lawn »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #86
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.

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

The use case was always there: paying for stuff.

Unfortunately it hasn't been a priority for the community and the focus has always been on getting rich, instead of working for infrastructure and adoption.

Even Bitcoin itself made this choice.

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

#449

Post by bitcoin_anon »

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 solves this.

Indeed. Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that the powers have deemed a commodity. The rest are securities.

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

#450

Post by xnorswap »

School-Cotton wrote: post #301
derefr wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Steam but where you actually own, and so can resell, your game licenses. This is already possible and always has been. The reason steam and the game studios haven’t implemented it is because it wasn’t in their interest to do so, not because they didn’t have the technology to.

Exactly this, and in fact as seen with CSGO skins / keys, steam had tradable skins which meet all the definitions of an "NFT" without blockchain.

They've been winding it back best they can ever since because having a tradable USD proxy (keys) led to money laundering and under-age gambling websites where people used "keys" as a proxy for dollars so eventually they had to make the keys non-tradable.

The cat was out the bag and too late to make the skins themselves non-tradable, but it's worth noting that other companies haven't tended to follow suit in having their skins fully marketplace enabled.

There just isn't the incentive for one, why would a company want people to be able to resell skins when they can just sell a fresh new copy at full price.

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