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Binance is under threat

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Re: Binance is under threat

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing to remember about Bitcoin, et al, is that it's decentralized. Sure, the code base may be gate-kept by a small clique of developers, sure, the mining may be largely done by a handful of coordinating mining pools, sure, you may need specialized hardware only manufactured by a couple of shady foundries, sure, all of the money may enter and exit through one or two exchanges pretending to comply with various mon…

Stop equating crypto with Bitcoin. This is one of the worst straw-men used by dishonest people.

I always hear this and I'm interested where the point of view comes from. Can you elaborate?

Fair warning I am one of the people who thinks it's all the same. Even though I have a lot of experience in the space when you zoom out a tiny bit for the average person it starts to look a lot like us arguing vi vs emacs - religion and meaningless and esoteric distinctions to the 99.999%.

Re: Binance is under threat

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing to remember about Bitcoin, et al, is that it's decentralized. Sure, the code base may be gate-kept by a small clique of developers, sure, the mining may be largely done by a handful of coordinating mining pools, sure, you may need specialized hardware only manufactured by a couple of shady foundries, sure, all of the money may enter and exit through one or two exchanges pretending to comply with various mon…

Stop equating crypto with Bitcoin. This is one of the worst straw-men used by dishonest people.

The worst you say?

Re: Binance is under threat

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might just as well wait for the 'obvious scam of the FED printing fake money' to implode. The thing with fiat money is, fake or not, as long as enough people believe in it, it functions well.

Fiat money is backed by guys with guns. Tether is not.

Guys backed with guns funded by fiat (tax revenue).

It's unbelievable to me that crypto people don't see/understand/refuse to acknowledge the huge difference.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Or (in this case) their gambling.

Re: Binance is under threat

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing to remember about Bitcoin, et al, is that it's decentralized. Sure, the code base may be gate-kept by a small clique of developers, sure, the mining may be largely done by a handful of coordinating mining pools, sure, you may need specialized hardware only manufactured by a couple of shady foundries, sure, all of the money may enter and exit through one or two exchanges pretending to comply with various mon…

Stop equating crypto with Bitcoin. This is one of the worst straw-men used by dishonest people.

I don't understand. If I say choose to use a German Shepard to represent dogs is that a dishonest straw-man? Bitcoin isn't all crypto, but it is a type of crypto, and just like how there are valid criticisms of German Shepards that can be used to expand to all dogs, the same can be done with Bitcoin, can it not?

Re: Binance is under threat

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might just as well wait for the 'obvious scam of the FED printing fake money' to implode. The thing with fiat money is, fake or not, as long as enough people believe in it, it functions well.

You are being downvoted but I think there's some truth. I'd like to see counter arguments. One that I can think of is the difference in intent. Tether is for profit and the FED is to stabilize the economy.

> I think there's some truth. I'd like to see counter arguments.

The history of money and banking. Starting with John Law [1], and why private, leveraged money requires a public backstop.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Law_(economist)

Re: Binance is under threat

#46
post #23

I'm still waiting for the "obvious scam that Tether is which is printing fake dollars as everybody knows" to implode. Any moment now. BTW, wasn't the narrative that crypto goes up because it's bought with printed Tethers? Why aren't they printing some now to start another bull market?

Are you implying that Tether isn't shady? Because it's obviously a huge scam. Now the question isn't if, it's when. And as Madoff showed us, it can take a very long time, decades even, before it fails. And predicting the future is very hard, so nobody knows how much longer it'll take. But down it will go because it's inevitable. And to your second paragraph, that's an oversimplification. Yes, printing Tether helped d…

[deleted]

Re: Binance is under threat

#47
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt Levine has an article on Tether and how tether is the perfect business except for them loaning crypto to customers. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-09-21/tether...

It is great as long as they are actually sticking to short dated US t-bills. They've just been super sketchy about if they are or are not in the past. Personally I think they're fine. The absolute worst case there's a run and depositors only get back like 75 cents on the dollar. Which is way better than most places that people park crypto.

My amateur theory is that Tether could have imploded for most of its existence, but now there’s a real chance that they have been (or will be) able to bluff their way to solvency.

But I’m probably wrong…

Re: Binance is under threat

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop equating crypto with Bitcoin. This is one of the worst straw-men used by dishonest people.

I always hear this and I'm interested where the point of view comes from. Can you elaborate? Fair warning I am one of the people who thinks it's all the same. Even though I have a lot of experience in the space when you zoom out a tiny bit for the average person it starts to look a lot like us arguing vi vs emacs - religion and meaningless and esoteric distinctions to the 99.999%.

Compare with Ethereum and you can quickly be disabused of this notion that they are at all similar.

- Ethereum uses PoS, and you can run a validator with commodity hardware which costs a couple of hundred dollars.

- All the validators online at this moment consume a fraction of electricity used by all current videogame consoles in stand-by.

- Ethereum's value is not derived from the expectation that it is a "store of a value", but that it will be required to run a lot of basic activities in its blockchain. "If BTC is digital gold, ETH aims to be digital oil" is a good analogy coined by Buterin.

- Because of this focus on the blockchain and its applications, very few people working in ETH actually worry about its price. Bitcoiners by and large do nothing but try convince other people that their coin is the chosen one. Ethereum developers don't really care about any specific coin, just that it runs on the Ethereum blockchain.

Do you need more examples?

Re: Binance is under threat

#49
> One institutional trader told The Wall Street Journal that his company has conducted fire drills to withdraw its assets from Binance quickly in the event of a meltdown.

If you think a crypto exchange you're doing business with is on shaky ground, the time to withdraw is now. So many crypto exchange collapses have shown that you need to withdraw before the "meltdown" if you want to ensure your assets are safe. If you wait you end up in bankruptcy purgatory for years and might only get a fraction of what you're owed.

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