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Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty

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351–360 of 498 posts

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

#351
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

I think they're also fundamentally insolvent even with the anthropic investment

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

#353
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He lives in the Middle East, which does not have any extradition treaties with America. He lives in Dubai, within one of the US's closest allies in the region. I'd be worried.

There are so many people who do not want to show up in the US (or elsewhere) and are living in Dubai that I would not be too worried. There is a full spectrum from former businessmen to current warlords. Dubai has a lot to lose by damaging its reputation as a safe haven for wealthy exiles. My 2c.

Dubai extradites hundreds of persons every year, including to US.

They have even more to lose by creating an image of criminal safe-haven.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-10/uae-ramps...

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

#354
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there been any Bitcoin "L2" that is actually functional. Last I checked the inventor of the most popular L2 said it was a failure.

Lightning has grown beyond its two original creators and now has a healthy community behind it. Worth mentioning are Rusty Russel (iptables, netfilter, some network layers of the Linux kernel) and the fine folks at Acinq (acinq.co). Yes, it still has some rough edges but it's now mostly usable. https://medium.com/coinmonks/lightning-network-2018-to-2023-... Besides, about 80% of transactions within exchanges are actu…

"Usable" is a massive stretch. The only way most people will ever be able to use it is through a custodial wallet, so it's right back to bank accounts and centralized exchanges.

But the whole thing is a distraction anyway. The majority of transactions happening off-chain means that Bitcoin is an utter failure at everything it ever set out to accomplish.

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

#355
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what?

yes, so why attack them if you can't tell them what the laws are? Again, I don't get why so many people on HN are simping for SEC?

It's not the government's obligation to give legal council to a corporation.

> I don't get why so many people on HN are simping for...

Why are you simping for crypto merchants?

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

#356
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. It is just pricing in the risk of the government making the on/off ramps impossible to access.

There should not be any on-off ramps to begin with. People should just transact in XMR directly. That's what crypto was supposed to have been like.

That won't happen and would actually be much worse for Monero because it means everything becomes a giant target for thieves and scammers, even more than it already is. The reason it's failed is because the idea of cryptocurrency is fundamentally bad. Monero isn't even trying to hide it. The developers openly say that criminals should use it to commit crimes.

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

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that the threat of something similar to Global Magnitsky Sanctions (cutting them off from all dollar-denominated accounts everywhere) is a pretty big stick to use in negotiations. For a financial firm like Binance, access to bank accounts that can send dollars to and from US firms is pretty important, even without any US customers at all (losing access to banking in France, Cyprus, etc. would be equally dif…

Btw - I never found a good explanation why all USD transfers need to be routed trough usd banks. Google is quite silent on the subject - is it common knowledge or too obvious?

They don't.

However when you're talking about billions, it's difficult to keep them in anything but US treasuries.

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

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTX has a ~$8B hole. It was far cheaper for CZ to pay the $4.3B fine.

Depends if buying FTX would have stabilized the price of their FTT coin. That would have filled in some of the hole. And then CZ wouldn't have had to step down

So FTX would still be in the hole, and CZ is likely in the hole.

Sounds like kicking the can down the road to me. That won't end well.

SBF commits fraud and loses $8b, CZ pleads guilty and pays $4.3B fine and loses access to US market. I don't know why so many people think the crypto space is legit and this is just a temporary setback.

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

#360
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tort/civil lawsuits are about being "made whole." Criminal lawsuits are not because they represent crimes against the state/society.

Thing is, prosecutors don't want to waste their time. Someone who made whole those who lost money or other assets (or at least made a credible effort to do so) gets lower priority and lower sentencing over someone who just sharts on laws.
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