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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

#451

Post by LapsangGuzzler »

thepasswordis wrote: post #327
LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SBF: put your money in FTX and you'll get life-changing returns Me: OK SBF: * takes my money * doesn't write it down anywhere * puts it into a giant slush fund without any accounting controls * loans some of it to his investment fund * buys millions in beachfront real estate with my and other victims money * goes around to all these interviews lying about what he's doing * plays Dota during a fundraising meeting * ge…

Yeah, so punish SBF for that specific instance of fraud. No need for a “securities and exchange commission” to decide how they feel about numbers in a ledger. The SEC should exist to help investors know what they’re buying, and should essentially be publishing due diligence reports and assisting in fraud cases. The idea that they get to essentially legislate via administrative fiat, with no input from congress, and c…

The SEC does answer to Congress. Are you saying that they should go get congressional approval before each and every enforcement action? If so, nothing would ever happen because Congress gets nothing done. They’ve suspended voting for the rest of the week due to infighting within the majority party.

Back to Binance, regulators are alleging that Binance commingled customer funds in offshore accounts, according to NYT. One pattern that seems to emerge consistently is that the anti-regulatory and anti-banking sentiment among these companies leads them to be careless and disorganized about their business operations, we saw it with FTX.

A lot of those accounting control and financial rules exist to prevent things like fraud and tax evasion, and it’s no surprise to see companies that try to get around the rules committing fraud and tax evasion.

This has zero to do with “numbers in a ledger” and everything to do with “you’re taking in billions in customer funds, and it’s our job to ensure that you’re not going to fail in a way that harms the markets.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/07/business/binance-cash-ban...

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

#452

Post by ProjectArcturis »

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.

Does it? If it works well for that, why hasn't it replaced Western Union after all this time?

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

#453

Post by notahacker »

siwatanejo wrote: post #373
tsimionescu wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Trust instead in the long long long history of BTC as a stable currency. You perceive it as unstable because you're using USD as a unit-of-account. As a thought exercise, if you were using BTC as the unit of account, what you would perceive unstable is the US dollar. And what you would see is that the USD value would be trending down against BTC, especially if you choose a time-frame equal or higher than 4 years. S…

As a thought experiment, if I use BTC as the unit of account, then the prices of all the stuff I want to buy denominated in Bitcoin vary wildly from month to month.

And if I choose a time frame of, say, 25 months or 19 months instead of 4 years, my savings lost more than half their purchasing power, which is far worse than anything QE has done to cash over equivalent time frames (ironically over a timescale which has been exceptionally bad for cash and exceptionally favourable to a notional "safe asset" alternative)

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

#454

Post by majestic5762 »

The solution to this problem is: - ban centralized exchanges - enforce stable coins to have their own coin-to-fiat exchange - allow only decentralized exchanges that can operate only if they implement some interoperability standards like dex-to-dex bridges - allow coins on decentralized exchanges only if they implement interoperability standards like blockchain-to-blockchain bridges

Now everybody can safely swap and transfer coins on whatever dex. If they want to cash out, swap again for usdt, then go to usdt official exchange and get your $.

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

#455

Post by siwatanejo »

ahtihn wrote: post #442
siwatanejo wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The discussion was about perceiving bitcoin as stable or not. I brought up BTCUSD contrast, but I can bring BTCSP5 instead (with the same point), without your concerns about USD not being "holdable".

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

#456

Post by _5uxp »

FabHK wrote: post #371
cft wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto has a viable micropayments for content story, see e.g. https://stacker.news . An upvote costs a minimum of 1 Satoshi (currently about 0.025¢)

Micropayments have been around since the 90’s, and never taken off. At any rate, a centralised version would likely be cheaper, more efficient, easier to use, with more functionality and better customer service.

You mean like Paypal etc and how they can just ban you and take your money? + Many countries can't access to "centralised version" by default. Imagine internet being country restricted and centralized so they can just choose which country/people can access it. That would be horrible

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

#457

Post by pjc50 »

FpUser wrote: post #166
eru wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right in practice. But it sounds an awful lot bit like the old "I have nothing to hide" argument against encryption, too? Many payment processors do restrict the business they want to deal with beyond what the letter of the law requires. (And that is their prerogative as a private business!)

If they refuse business to let's say gays the government would come after them. How is refusing to serve legal sex workers different?

Sex workers are less likely to be "out" under their real name, which is a prerequisite for achieving redress through the courts.

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

#458

Post by myfirstacchere »

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.

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

#459

Post by myfirstacchere »

silisili wrote: post #17

I'm pretty anti-crypto, but tested the water with Voyager USDC because of the absurd APY. Took my money and ran when Celsius hinted at having issues, luckily. Funnily enough there was some amount, less than a dollar IIRC, left in Voyager when they folded. I received an email telling me it was being taken over by...Binance. Never bothered to login and even check it. Guess it really is scams all the way down.

[dead]

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

#460

Post by agentgumshoe »

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…

What's your point, they're crypto so doing illegal stuff is ok because it's 'different?'
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