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Binance outflows hit $6B as Mazars halts ‘proof of reserves’ work

ft.com

221–230 of 506 posts

Re: Binance outflows hit $6B as Mazars halts ‘proof of reserves’ work

#221
post #72

"Binance has said it holds more than $60bn in assets, enough to honour withdrawals. The company’s disclosures do not include its liabilities, which makes it difficult to ascertain its financial health." Possibilities: 1) They're insolvent. Liabilities exceed assets. (Like FTX.) 2) Their accounting is so screwed up they can't produce a balance sheet. (Like FTX). 3) They have a large number of interconnected corporate…

All of the above and:

5) Binance does significant money laundering for Iran and Russia, so any complete picture of their balance sheet would invite sanctions and international retribution.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/exclusive-crypto-ex...

Re: Binance outflows hit $6B as Mazars halts ‘proof of reserves’ work

#222
post #170
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source: Page 30 https://pacer-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/33/188450/042020648...

Oof. The preliminary corporate outline in Appendixes B of the filing is a lot. I guess presumably you'd want to compartmentalize risk via corporate structures in as sprawling of a business as FTX was ( especially if you were aware you had terrible internal controls), but it does beg the question of what nature of business each of these entities was engaged in. I.e. if they conducting actual business and so their exis…

It wasn't a "as sprawling of a business as FTX was". It was a shell game.

Re: Binance outflows hit $6B as Mazars halts ‘proof of reserves’ work

#223
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They haven't done anything wrong AFAIK; they didn't sign off on an audit, and withdrew, which is the reality of many smaller accounting practices taking on unfamiliar clients. Arthur Anderson knowingly fudged the numbers at Enron, and provided both accounting and consulting services, which was a big conflict of interest. The consulting arm came up with new type of revenue opportunities (energy contracts), and the acc…

It’s actually so nuts. People rarely get into the details of how crazy accounting was in Enron. They made an agreement to build a power plant, then booked 50 years of profit from operating it before they broke ground.

I knew about accounting for lifetime costs, but accounting for lifetime profits is a new one hahaha.

Re: Binance outflows hit $6B as Mazars halts ‘proof of reserves’ work

#224
post #72

"Binance has said it holds more than $60bn in assets, enough to honour withdrawals. The company’s disclosures do not include its liabilities, which makes it difficult to ascertain its financial health." Possibilities: 1) They're insolvent. Liabilities exceed assets. (Like FTX.) 2) Their accounting is so screwed up they can't produce a balance sheet. (Like FTX). 3) They have a large number of interconnected corporate…

5) Like tether they are solvent despite all the people screaming for an audit

If you believe that you must be using all that corporate paper to smoke something.

Re: Binance outflows hit $6B as Mazars halts ‘proof of reserves’ work

#225
We have a problem here

First implied statement: 1. Has funds to buy FTX

Second implied statement: 2. has funds to send back due to fraud conveyance claw back

Notice the pattern yet as not one implied statement has been stated as a direct statement.

SBF showed the same amount of obfuscation.

Not good folks.

Re: Binance outflows hit $6B as Mazars halts ‘proof of reserves’ work

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ouch. Thanks for that. I wonder why the normal customer funds segregation rules do not apply to crypto assets.

It may not hold up in court. But at that point, you’re trying to claim assets back from a bankrupt entity.

The disclosure isn’t a statement of what Coinbase would want to happen, but rather what a bankruptcy court might do. Bankruptcy law is very pro-debtor. An entity in bankruptcy court is like a Hoover, aggressively sucking any nearby assets into the bankruptcy estate.

Re: Binance outflows hit $6B as Mazars halts ‘proof of reserves’ work

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only that crypto is so unregulated that is hard to define what to audit against. And FTX wad never fully audited anyways, something which woupd be impossible with non-crypto equivalents of whatever FTX was beyond a major scam.

Exactly. However the serious participants in the cryptocurrency space have been begging for regulation. The complaint however is that the regulations that have been proposed are trying to pidgeonhole the different parts of digital assets and decentralised finance (not defi but decentralised financial services as a whole) into existing categories that they don't cleanly fit in. Cryptocurrency for example isn't a commo…

Begging for regulation, like SBF? Officially regulated or not, as an exchange you can still insist on a) have one of the big 4 adivise you on whether you are a bank, a broker or whatever else exists in finance b) define internal controls and processes based on a) and have c) one of the other big 4 properly audit you against b).

SBF even admitted that his insistence on regulation was just a front.

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