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

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

#431

Post by jacquesm »

marvin wrote: post #251
jacquesm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, and one more: they may have been shuttling money around from account to account to look solvent but aren't.

Someone mentioned the early-banking era wheelbarrow of gold travelling around from bank to bank just in time to make the audit.

That's such a funny mental image, seeing the guys with the wheelbarrow trying to make it to the bank just in time for the auditors to appear and everybody is sitting around like it's perfectly normal and trying not to breathe too hard.

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

#432

Post by andirk »

digitaltrees wrote: post #403
lostmsu wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe then they would spend it Why? Do you want to buy?

Currency shouldnt be “bought” it should be used. Earned and spent.

Forex is a very real very gigantic form of investment.

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

#433

Post by jacquesm »

akudha wrote: post #62
epolanski wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be surprised at human greed. Was it last week when there was an interview with several "investors", and pretty much all of them admitted they knew they were speculating in a highly volatile and unregulated market before they lost all their savings in FTX' crash? They knew the risks, they tried anyway, some really needed that money.

It is greed for sure. But it is also the lack of legit opportunities to invest, unless one is an accredited investor. I found a handful of places I wanted to invest, but I can't, because I am not an accredited investor. I am left with stock market and crypto. It is super funny (sad?) that I can go to Vegas and blow up my life savings in a matter of hours. There are no rules to save me from that. But there are rules c…

In Vegas at least you're supposed to be having a good time blowing through your cash.

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

#435

Post by jacquesm »

echelon wrote: post #412
noisenotsignal wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy cow, you had hundreds of thousands of dollars of assets and couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to cash out before they lost value? You are on a different planet of financial management than most of us.

There was so much going on during the pandemic. My early employee stock and the rest of my portfolio was booming, and I'd just made my yearly TC on GME. The dogecoin gains were smaller and kind of an afterthought. To top it off, the hard drive with the dogecoin was back at my mom's place or in storage, and it would have taken a lot of time to go back and find it. Since it was easy to leave the computer where it was,…

I think your degree of resilience in dealing with such setbacks is something to strive for, at the same time please be more careful in the future, the price of such setbacks tends to go up as you get older and even though you managed to get through this one in relatively good shape (if not financially, then at least mentally) the next time around you may not be so lucky.

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

#436

Post by jacquesm »

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #406
jacquesm wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sarcasm is so thick that even a non-native like me picks it up.

The only thing thicker is me, apparently :P

It happens :) The first few years on HN I was super bad at this, but after a while it becomes a bit easier and the posters history is usually a good clue. That said I still get it wrong plenty of times, especially in writing.

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

#437

Post by jazzyjackson »

jacquesm wrote: post #434
dicomdan wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes

Suggest adding a /s in the future to avoid confusion.

the goal is communication is not always clarity

the fun of sarcasm is knowing enough to recognize it

if somebody is too out of the loop to recognize it and picks an argument, it's collateral damage

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

#438

Post by raven105x »

Animats wrote: 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…

If you have assets in any* exchange, get them out now. Using regulated exchanges defeats the whole point. Fiat transaction fees are lower / nonexistent compared to CC ones so if you want to gamble on the relative value of something just stick to the stock market, and if you want to send currency on something that is regulated by a government anyways, might as well use Fiat.

The only thing regulated exchanges do is profit by losing you value via fees and then some more via taxes while carrying risks of being rugged or having "your" assets frozen. Just... why?

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

#439

Post by jacquesm »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #437
jacquesm wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suggest adding a /s in the future to avoid confusion.

the goal is communication is not always clarity the fun of sarcasm is knowing enough to recognize it if somebody is too out of the loop to recognize it and picks an argument, it's collateral damage

That may be so, but in normal communications, such as speech it is tone of voice and possibly non-verbal hints that will indicate sarcasm. Online you don't have that and the 'collateral damage' can result in a lot of wasted bits from people reacting to the words rather than to the joke and this in turn can drown out the rest of the discussion.

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

#440

Post by matthewdgreen »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #267
europeanguy wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not suggesting you're wrong, but would you care to clarify how exactly binance being "in dire straits" (in the sense of not being able to honor withdrawals, I presume you mean) would affect the value of BNB?

There's not much BNB volume outside of Binance: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bnb/markets/ They could defend the price pretty easily by rigging the price on their exchange by printing BUSD to buy BNB. I will be shocked if we don't find proof they've done this in the past. You can do this w/o screwing customers. Let's assume that some percentage of BUSD is legit (likely a lot of it is). This means BUSD has some…

Actual BUSD is issued on Ethereum by Paxos, which is a separate US company that is licensed and regulated by NYDFS. I think it’s unlikely that any of this issuance is fraudulent. Binance then maintains a “pegged BUSD” token on the BNB chain (and other chains.) This is supposed to be backed “1 to 1” by Real-BUSD held in a Binance wallet on chain. They could break this peg at any instant they chose, but it would be visible. I did the math a few days ago over here [1] and it checked out. I’m posting this not to say the situation isn’t risky, just that it seems risky in a highly-transparent way - ie, I can’t see how they would manufacture BUSD without someone noticing. Maybe there’s a loophole I don’t see.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33976228

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