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Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty

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Re: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Domestic and international settlement speed

Wrong. Wise does this better than crypto.

Ironically the only way Wise would be faster to withdraw money to my (foreign) account is via crypto, for which they quote three digits (yikes!)

Re: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More specifically now you can get actual real money by putting your savings in a bank account (and most people are struggling to pay the increased cost of living), there's less incentive to throw it away in a casino.

5% annualized on 4% inflation is a joke. I don't consider "high yield" savings to be any kind of strategy.

If you have a mortgage, it ain’t half bad

Re: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have any numbers on this? The only numbers I could find are very modest[1]. IIRC Zeke Faux, the author of "Number Go Up" also noted that adoption is very illusory - like the "Accepts Bitcoin" stickers you see all over the place Canada when there's no functioning bitcoin payment processing inside. But besides all that, I think it's criminal to leave people in underdeveloped countries at the whims of unaccountable cent…

I think it's criminal to leave people in underdeveloped countries at the whims of unaccountable central-bank-style institutions like Federal Reserve.

It's criminal to leave people in underdeveloped countries at the whims of criminals.

Re: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name any positive valid use case that crypto does better than the current financial system.

Visa are using it for cross-border settlements between issuer and merchant banks: https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.rele...

This is surprising.

But it might not be as pro-crypto as crypto-boosters think. Crypto was supposed to replace orgs like Visa. Now Visa is co-opting crypto.

Re: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty

#325
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have failed eventually. FTX was fundamentally unstable.

Rumor is that FTX is not that awful financially right now, because of their Anthropic investment.

The Anthropic investment is completely illiquid. It was liquidity issues that crashed FTX originally.

TL;DR: they might have assets but they were and are still "awful financially"

Re: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty

#326

SBF decided to testify against CZ to try to save his own ass, giving justice dept and sec something to fine CZ with. Govt collects a big crypto fine, fine makes the big losers in FTX whole, problem solved. CZ should have just bought FTX and closed the deal and made people whole, woulda saved himself some drama.

Pretty great example of Hacker News when the top comment is "They should have done more crime but in a different way."

As long as those who are affected by some kind of loss are (reasonably) made whole, most legal systems won't give a flying f..k about anything.

Re: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty

#327
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice to see level-headed crypto optimism here. It's disheartening seeing bulls who have long since stopped pretending their favorite coin has any utility beyond being a speculative asset and a get-rich-quick scheme given its poor transaction rate, or that the features they've bolted on will make it valuable, none of which make it viable as a currency. Why would anyone bother with Bitcoin? If you want to avoid fi…

Be mindful of potential biases. Monero is rightfully highly regarded for its privacy, but you may be overlooking certain aspects: - Unlike Bitcoin, Monero's monetary issuance is not auditable, which could prove a major problem in case of an attack, potentially leading to inflation. - Monero faces blockchain bloat issues due to its ring signatures. It cannot scale gracefully. - Privacy and transaction cost concerns wi…

Lightning does work if you're using a large provider but it undermines the utility of BTC not requiring a middle-man. Running a lightning node with personal funds is simply not likely or safe for your average hodler.

I'm not sure you've used Bisq or RoboSats if you think they're good replacements for exchanges. Barely anyone is online at a given time.

Re: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty

#328
post #287

SBF decided to testify against CZ to try to save his own ass, giving justice dept and sec something to fine CZ with. Govt collects a big crypto fine, fine makes the big losers in FTX whole, problem solved. CZ should have just bought FTX and closed the deal and made people whole, woulda saved himself some drama.

Check the Reuters investigative pieces on CZ and Binance from 2022. They had plenty to fine him with before SBF's testimony. I actually can't believe he didn't get jail time given the severity of what was uncovered.

Probably the information that they (Binance) will share is really valuable to US.

Could we make a connection about Binance, and now Kraken prosecution with what happened after 9/11 where US pressed countries such as Switzerland to remove bank secrets? [1]

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/24/swiss-claim-the-us-banking-c....

Re: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty

#329
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, perhaps, it's proof that the purpose of crypto in 2023[1] is not utility, it's line-goes-up. [1] And 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, ...

Utility? It already works. I've gotten paid for services via monero. I'd be very happy if Monero somehow turned into the stable coin of crypto. It could just hover around $150-$200 forever.

You can feed your dog dinner off a golden plate, but that doesn't mean the price of gold is driven by its utility.

Re: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty

#330

SBF decided to testify against CZ to try to save his own ass, giving justice dept and sec something to fine CZ with. Govt collects a big crypto fine, fine makes the big losers in FTX whole, problem solved. CZ should have just bought FTX and closed the deal and made people whole, woulda saved himself some drama.

Why would these fines go to debtors of a private institution? I believe DOJ fines typically get deposited into the US Treasury.

Correct, I don't know why this is the top comment when it's so wrong.
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