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Binance temporarily suspends USDC withdrawals

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41–50 of 194 posts

Re: Binance temporarily suspends USDC withdrawals

#41
post #5
post #4

What is BUSD and why does it affect withdrawals of an unrelated token?

Guess it's Binance' stable coin. It does seems a little strange, do they convert all their assets to their own stable coin? :O https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/binance-usd/

They automatically convert most stablecoins (though very notably not Tether) into BUSD upon depositing. Then if you withdraw some USDP/TUSD/USDC/maybe some others I'm not remembering, they'll subtract it from your BUSD balance.

FTX did something similar, though they just auto-converted them to and from fiat USD (again, notably, not applying this policy to Tether).

Re: Binance temporarily suspends USDC withdrawals

#42
post #14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other two, which conveniently both have ties back to Binance. It feels a bit like saying "Unfortunately, converting Facebook Dollars to Apple Dollars is currently not possible due to minor technical difficulties. However, you can still easily convert to Oculus Dollars or Instagram Dollars..."

What's so weird about these stable coins is that there's no money to be made with them (for the end user). They're 'stable' so have no upside but they're non-redeemable when things aren't working and have a real probability of going straight to zero at any given moment. I'd get it for some volatile coin where the risk is potentially worth it but holding these for more than a few days for clearing (?) doesn't make sen…

Quite a few people want to borrow stable coins and are prepared to do so at interest.

Re: Binance temporarily suspends USDC withdrawals

#43

What I fear is that U.S. Government is meddling with the only exchange that works properly in Venezuela and Argentina, especifically for the P2P trade. I know this tweet is not about P2P, but let me explain. In Venezuela and Argentina, the parallel markets are the true king of the economy. You have to exchange money using P2P exchanges if you want to barely have decent personal finances, you know, to access good curr…

The government isn't 'meddling' with Binance, Binance is under the spotlight because it appears that keeping reserves is a bit of a weak point with all of these new finance companies. If anything you should be grateful that there (finally) is some oversight, but I fear it is too little and too late.

Re: Binance temporarily suspends USDC withdrawals

#44

Ah yes, truly the peak of cryptocurrency "Sorry, we can't process that highly decentralized censorship proof freedom coin, we're waiting for our bankers in New York to wake up".

Nobody with basic knowledge in this area would think of USDC as "highly decentralized censorship proof freedom coin". It is centralised and pegged to USD so obviously it must be intentionally interlinked with the banking system.

Creation or redemption of USDC for USD need to interact with the banking system.

But movements of USDC need no interaction with the banking system, so there should be no need to pause them.

Re: Binance temporarily suspends USDC withdrawals

#45
post #37
post #30

The quotes around "temporarily" are editorialising, IMO. They should be removed. No fan of Binance but it's a reasonable explanation and submitter has given no reason to think it is not, indeed, a temporary situation, as has happened many times in the past without particular note.

It is not reasonable at all. It means that: 1. They are not prepared at all for a "bank run" 2. USDC on the exchange are not backed by real USDC. Therefor they need to market buy them. 3. CZ is telling people to withdraw using BUSD and USDT, both more or less Binance controlled stables that are much harder to convert into real USD. It would be extremely wise to exit Binance and Binance related coins such as BNB, BUSD…

> It would be extremely wise to exit Binance and Binance related coins such as BNB, BUSD and Tether.

Indeed, but the great ponzi scheme rolls on none the less :/

Re: Binance temporarily suspends USDC withdrawals

#46
post #30

The quotes around "temporarily" are editorialising, IMO. They should be removed. No fan of Binance but it's a reasonable explanation and submitter has given no reason to think it is not, indeed, a temporary situation, as has happened many times in the past without particular note.

I agree it is editorialising, at the same time this has been a set pattern so far: first temporarily halt withdrawals, then come back with some bs excuse that the money is gone (blame the hacker, bad investments, loans, whatever) and go into bankruptcy.

Re: Binance temporarily suspends USDC withdrawals

#47
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess it's Binance' stable coin. It does seems a little strange, do they convert all their assets to their own stable coin? :O https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/binance-usd/

Yes they do, they announced it a while back. It is certainly interesting way to handle customer assets.

In some horribly twisted way, it might make sense?

If BUSD is a “safe” stable coin backed by real, liquid, currency in a binance bank account (lots of IFs), it might make more sense as accounting than storing it as USDC stored in another company’s bank account, in that other company’s country. If that company makes bad decisions, it could impact binances customers. Especially after FTX and prior stablecoin fiascos, storing customers funds in your own bank seems prudent.

If binance can soft-real-time mint USDC during bank hours, then any conversion can be done by a regular-banking wire transfer. All they need is some pre-minted reserves for off-hours.

Orrrrrrr they’re playing games with customers funds and hiding it in their own coffers. In which case BUSD is backed by a lie. FTX is familiar.

Re: Binance temporarily suspends USDC withdrawals

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody with basic knowledge in this area would think of USDC as "highly decentralized censorship proof freedom coin". It is centralised and pegged to USD so obviously it must be intentionally interlinked with the banking system.

This is the fiction of Crypto though - we're all here in this space because we want decentralized censorship-proof, public recorded transactions, and we then proceed to immediately abandon all of those principles to trade dollar denominated assets on a central exchange that operates out of a shady jurisdiction. Yes, we all know what the point of crypto was. Yes we all know what is actually happening, the only questio…

> Yes we all know what is actually happening, the only question left is why the hell are we still doing it?

One of the most difficult things to do is explain to a cult member that they're a cult member. Similar to participants in the great crypto ponzi scheme.

Re: Binance temporarily suspends USDC withdrawals

#49
post #26
post #2

"Binance Withdrawals Surge as Concerns About Its Reserve Report Spook Traders" : https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/12/13/binance-withdraw...

Issuing that bogus "audit" was such a strange own goal. Why did he do it?

It bought them a few days stay of execution. You can move a lot of money around in that time.

Re: Binance temporarily suspends USDC withdrawals

#50

What I fear is that U.S. Government is meddling with the only exchange that works properly in Venezuela and Argentina, especifically for the P2P trade. I know this tweet is not about P2P, but let me explain. In Venezuela and Argentina, the parallel markets are the true king of the economy. You have to exchange money using P2P exchanges if you want to barely have decent personal finances, you know, to access good curr…

> They just do not have the capacity nor good exchange rates

They could grow very rapidly if the customer base were to show up and demand it.

I bet within a week they could 10x - at least for basic functions of deposit, exchange, withdraw.

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