Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Binance lays off over 1k Employees

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 234 posts

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#221

Post by dragonwriter »

stale2002 wrote: post #214
dragonwriter wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're the first challenger to fiat currencies ever. Direct commodity and commodity-representational currencies were the first challengers to fiat currencies, and for about the first millenium after the first know fiat was introduced, generally won . Cryptocurrency is not the “first challenger to fiat currency ever”.

Hey, quick question dragonwriter. Previously, you tried to say that FB was going to, I don't know, Sue startups who use LLAMA or something, due to them not yet releasing a commerical license, with a permissive license? Do you still stand by this statement, now that FB has commercially released a large language model? And then question 2 would be, what possible argument could someone say to you, to have convinced you…

> Previously, you tried to say that FB was going to, I don't know, Sue startups who use LLAMA or something, due to them not yet releasing a commerical license, with a permissive license?

I’m not certain how to parse the last part of that sentence, but I'm fairly certain that I didn’t ever try to say that Facebook was going to sue LLaMa users, startups or otherwise.

I may have argued that the license terms created sufficient legal risk that most firms would be loathe to build on top of it, but that’s very much not the same thing.

> Do you still stand by this statement, now that FB has commercially released a large language model?

As far as I know, they have announced plans to release an LLM (which may or may not be LLaMa) with a commercially-usable (maybe open source) license in the near future, but have not yet done so.

But since I don’t recall making the claim (and have very clear reasons why I would have been unlikely to have), I won't stand by it even without the new information you indicate (which seems premature, AFAICT.)

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#222

Post by peschu »

retube wrote: post #138
peschu wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article saysthat they had 8000 before layoffs started... What are all these people doing at an exchange? Maybe they work with orders on paper in the background? :D

They operate in 100 countries, have 30m users, support trading in 360 coins PLUS a load of derivatives on top and process $15bn of trades per day. And they are not just "an exchange". They are also custody, clearing and settlements. Frankly I am amazed they are only 8,000.

Idk...throwing around big numbers, implying confidence does not convince me. Also your numbers are mostly not neccessarily related to the amount of workforce needed.

For example my blog/website operates theoretically in all countries on the world ...still it's only me needed. I think you get the point.

I think a measure like active users is more related to the size than number of countries and coins/tokens ...

But it is true I focused a too much on the platform itself etc. They have a lot stuff going on around it for legal, kyc, regulations, Marketing etc ... The operation of the platform itself is probably not the biggest part of their business anymore.

But coinbase for example, does it with less than 5000 ... But probably not so easy to compare

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#223

Post by manuelabeledo »

RestlessMind wrote: post #218
manuelabeledo wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here you go, I have compiled some examples for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 Isn't it a bit disingenuous to think that common people have moved $50bn in Bitcoin out of China? Or have moved ~$2.4bn worth of Bitcoin in Nigeria in a single month? > A lot of people do actually have to face shitty systems where Bitcoin is a godsend. I would say that a handful of examples, of which some are highly qu…

> a handful of examples Well, Bitcoin price is still 30K USD and the market cap is almost 600B USD. That is a very good macro proof that people value Bitcoin. > I could ask the same I was born in a third world country where the leader decided to demonetize 87% of currency in circulation on a whim. And the society doesn't trust government at all - people buy gold or land as soon as they can. Where are you from? > I ha…

> Well, Bitcoin price is still 30K USD and the market cap is almost 600B USD. That is a very good macro proof that people value Bitcoin.

Let’s not forget that Bitcoin price averages a volatility of ~4% daily. With Bitcoin, any given individual could have sold goods or services and make a profit one day, and lose pretty much everything in a week.

If that is not a sign of Bitcoin being used as a vehicle for speculative markets, I don’t know what it is.

> Have you actually bothered to talk to anyone? I have had in-person conversations with people from multiple despotic or shitty regimes (Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Iran) to understand how and why they use Bitcoin.

Using Bitcoin properly requires a certain level of tech and financial literacy most people just don’t have. It also relies on expensive infrastructure that is highly dependent on mining being profitable. Again, this is not 2011 anymore, nowadays only the very wealthy can expect to profit from Bitcoin mining.

I guess the question is, what is so different between a crappy hyper inflated currency, controlled by an authoritarian government, and a crappy volatile cryptocurrency, controlled by a few wealthy individuals?

On that regard, If I were to call any friend from Venezuela and ask them about starting to use Bitcoin right now, they would surely get some 2014 vibes.

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#224

Post by thedrbrian »

nkuttler wrote: post #106
vorticalbox wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and is definitely not an enormous grift that's pouring lighter fluid on our already smoldering planet. This is actually a worry i have about in regards to crypto, the BTC network uses a staggering amount of power. Ai is next of my power hungry worry list.

> the BTC network uses a staggering amount of power Actually, bitcoin uses a ridiculously small amount of power for what it provides. See for example here https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/ for an introduction to clear up this misconception.

All that electricity so that 3 to 7 people a second can buy some drugs.

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#226

Post by martin8412 »

RestlessMind wrote: post #218
manuelabeledo wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here you go, I have compiled some examples for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 Isn't it a bit disingenuous to think that common people have moved $50bn in Bitcoin out of China? Or have moved ~$2.4bn worth of Bitcoin in Nigeria in a single month? > A lot of people do actually have to face shitty systems where Bitcoin is a godsend. I would say that a handful of examples, of which some are highly qu…

> a handful of examples Well, Bitcoin price is still 30K USD and the market cap is almost 600B USD. That is a very good macro proof that people value Bitcoin. > I could ask the same I was born in a third world country where the leader decided to demonetize 87% of currency in circulation on a whim. And the society doesn't trust government at all - people buy gold or land as soon as they can. Where are you from? > I ha…

No, the price is 30K USDT, which has very dubious backing, part of which is BTC. They've never been audited and thus nothing points to them being solvent. It's believed that a lot of the backing is in Chinese real estate papers which took quite a big fall with Evergrandes' troubles.

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#227

Post by monero-xmr »

ac29 wrote: post #207
monero-xmr wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trial isn’t interesting. The summary judgment says it’s legal to sell cryptocurrencies if you do so anonymously on retail exchanges, and the tokens also are not securities. Very interesting outcome. The appeals are likely to fail from my reading of various analyses.

> The summary judgment says it’s legal to sell cryptocurrencies if you do so anonymously on retail exchanges, and the tokens also are not securities. This is a misrepresentation. The ruling says some specific XRP sales by Ripple via exchanges were not investment contracts. It does not say they are not securities, nor does it say that it is broadly "legal to sell cryptocurrencies" on exchanges.

Head of legal for Coinbase disagrees with you:

https://twitter.com/iampaulgrewal/status/1679962578808709122...

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#228

Post by fatfingerd »

CydeWeys wrote: post #66
arp242 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knew someone who worked at Binance, as support. I'm sure he's competent enough at his job, but he has no special skills or anything. He made more money than I did as a senior software dev at the time. It seems not only did they hire a lot of people, they also paid them an ungodly amount of money.

It sounds like he didn't make that much money for long. Better to have a real career where you're making good money every year, year after year.

Doing a support role on a titanic is just as much potential beginnings of a good career that pays forever. I've known plenty of devs and bar passing lawyers that got nowhere in their career and plenty of support engineers that followed roughly the same user base across multiple bankrupt software companies.

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#229

Post by RestlessMind »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #223
RestlessMind wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a handful of examples Well, Bitcoin price is still 30K USD and the market cap is almost 600B USD. That is a very good macro proof that people value Bitcoin. > I could ask the same I was born in a third world country where the leader decided to demonetize 87% of currency in circulation on a whim. And the society doesn't trust government at all - people buy gold or land as soon as they can. Where are you from? > I ha…

> Well, Bitcoin price is still 30K USD and the market cap is almost 600B USD. That is a very good macro proof that people value Bitcoin. Let’s not forget that Bitcoin price averages a volatility of ~4% daily . With Bitcoin, any given individual could have sold goods or services and make a profit one day, and lose pretty much everything in a week. If that is not a sign of Bitcoin being used as a vehicle for speculativ…

> Using Bitcoin properly requires a certain level of tech and financial literacy most people just don’t have. It also relies on expensive infrastructure that is highly dependent on mining being profitable. Again, this is not 2011 anymore, nowadays only the very wealthy can expect to profit from Bitcoin mining.

But most of the users don't mine - they just buy and hold. It is pretty simple and is as complicated (or simple) as buying and holding gold.

> a crappy volatile cryptocurrency, controlled by a few wealthy individuals

No idea how that is relevant since we are discussing Bitcoin :-p. In seriousness, that is where the social belief comes from. If people believe Bitcoin to be controlled by a few wealthy individuals, then either they will stay away. If they believe Bitcoin to be a truly decentralized store of value not controlled by any single government or entity, they will flock to it. If they are right, they will be rewarded with an asset which will appreciate in the long run. If they are wrong, they will get burned.

So far, believers in Bitcoin seem to be getting rewarded handsomely and naysayers are proven wrong multiple times (https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/).

> If I were to call any friend from Venezuela and ask them about starting to use Bitcoin right now, they would surely get some 2014 vibes.

I met a Venezuelan last week and he regularly sends Bitcoin back home to help his family. Fiat exchange rate is artificially suppressed so his family would receive less if he sends USD. Gold is hard to send from the US to Venezuela. No one can stop Bitcoin transfers though and it is more trusted than the local currency.

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#230

Post by RestlessMind »

martin8412 wrote: post #226
RestlessMind wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a handful of examples Well, Bitcoin price is still 30K USD and the market cap is almost 600B USD. That is a very good macro proof that people value Bitcoin. > I could ask the same I was born in a third world country where the leader decided to demonetize 87% of currency in circulation on a whim. And the society doesn't trust government at all - people buy gold or land as soon as they can. Where are you from? > I ha…

No, the price is 30K USDT, which has very dubious backing, part of which is BTC. They've never been audited and thus nothing points to them being solvent. It's believed that a lot of the backing is in Chinese real estate papers which took quite a big fall with Evergrandes' troubles.

> the price is 30K USDT

You can literally sell one Bitcoin on Coinbase right now and get >30K USD back (minus commission). No idea how USDT is relevant here.

Post reply on HN