Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao agrees to step down, plead guilty

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–498 of 498 posts

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

#491

Post by kylebenzle »

play_ac wrote: post #356
matheusmoreira wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe that the ideal end goal would be that a cryptocurrency is a closed system where a person could buy, sell and earn all in one currency. At that point if it grows big enough price will stabilize and more and more day to day commerce will move to the blockchain.

Bitcoin and Monero have always been able to send transactions instantly and for Bitcoin, essentially free for over a decade with zero down time. That beats the pants off Visa and MasterCard.

Why use an inflationary currency that costs 2% to spend and takes 30+ days to settle?

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

#492

Post by salawat »

psychlops wrote: post #462
acdha wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the inflation seen in the U.S. is corporate profit-taking such as when the automakers used the chip shortages to steer buyers towards the highest-end models they prioritized for production while less profitable models were back ordered. That matters because cryptocurrencies don’t help at all with the inflation consumers are seeing, while adding more personal risk and an exchange rate to arbitrage.

You have an interesting worldview. Corporations take profits to pay their employees. They do this with or without inflation and always have. How would a crypto "help" with inflation? In the same way the Dollar "helps" with the inflation of the Euro? Cryptos don't add to personal risk, people do that. If you think cryptos are making an impact, you should understand that the entire crypto economy is a rounding error in…

Profit is not taken to pay employees by definition. Profit is gross less all liabilities. Liabilities include payroll. Payroll is revenue.

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

#493

Post by nprateem »

acdha wrote: post #486
psychlops wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have an interesting worldview. Corporations take profits to pay their employees. They do this with or without inflation and always have. How would a crypto "help" with inflation? In the same way the Dollar "helps" with the inflation of the Euro? Cryptos don't add to personal risk, people do that. If you think cryptos are making an impact, you should understand that the entire crypto economy is a rounding error in…

I think you misunderstood the point: when a large portion of the cost increases are due to companies raising their profit margins, changing how you pay for it won’t affect that.

Unless you're planning to pay for it with an asset whose value fluctuates wildly.

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

#494

Post by acdha »

nprateem wrote: post #493
acdha wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood the point: when a large portion of the cost increases are due to companies raising their profit margins, changing how you pay for it won’t affect that.

Unless you're planning to pay for it with an asset whose value fluctuates wildly.

That’s a separate factor, though. It’s definitely one of the reasons why cryptocurrencies never became popular but in the case we’re talking about it’d just be making a bad situation worse rather than the cause for it being bad.

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

#495

Post by tw1984 »

bergen wrote: post #451
lifty wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you say it’s a con job? The settlement is for not enforcing money loundering restrictions, not conning or scamming people. Binance seems to be reputable and hasn’t done any shady things with customer funds, as far as I know.

Did you every track their tokens? The price of movement of the short and long coins was very dubious. Binance at points allowed up to transfer and 1 BTC without registration, therefore enabling a lot of shady characters to trade on their platform. A lot of scammers and fraudsters were using binance as their preferred platform.

> A lot of scammers and fraudsters were using binance as their preferred platform.

they are the exact targeted audience of CZ's business.

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

#496

Post by qingcharles »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #294
drited wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Lim also acknowledged in February 2020 that some of Binance’s customers, including those from Russia, were involved in illegal activities, according to the complaint. Lim wrote in a chat message about those trades: “Like come on. They are here for crime.” Money Laundering Reporting Officer at Binance responded at the time, “we see the bad, but we close 2 eyes.” https://archive.is/Q8uu3

Reminds me of my account manager at PayPal when I was running a TV torrent tracker. "We both know what you're doing, just never tell me what you're doing, OK?"

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

#497

Post by colesantiago »

everfree wrote: post #485
colesantiago wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? This doesn't change the fact that centralisation is still a massive problem with Ethereum and it is still a big enough problem that everyone knows that the crypto infra of choice is to coalesce on AWS. Infura deploys Ethereum nodes solely on AWS further centralising Ethereum on there thanks to a Consensys and AWS partnership. The entire opposite of decentralisation in crypto.

Again, you're free to hold whatever additional opinions you want. I'll respectfully pass on discussing those, as my original intent was to correct a particular piece of misinformation.

What misinformation? I think I missed it or it wasn't misinformation in the first place.

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

#498

Post by bumby »

dragonwriter wrote: post #343
bumby wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Tort/civil lawsuits are about being "made whole." Only at the “modelling a cow as a perfectly thermoconducting sphere” level of analysis. Actual damages and preliminary injunctions to preserve a situation remediable by damages are about that, other parts of what happens in civil cases are often not. E.g., punitive damages are, as the name suggests, punitive , not compensatory.

I'm unsure I follow your "modeling as a cow" analogy. Usually, that's used to show the model does not adequately reflect reality. But that doesn't hold in tort cases. Compensatory damages are the majority, by a considerable margin. According to DOJ data[1]:

- Punitive damages were awarded in only 5% of trials where the plaintiff won

- It was lower for tort cases (3%) and higher for contract cases (8%)

- It is lower in product liability and medical cases (1% each)

Those findings show that the punitive damages awarded are both relatively rare and modest. A "spherical cow model" based on compensatory damages is probably still a very good model.

[1] https://www.centerjd.org/content/fact-sheet-punitive-damages...

Post reply on HN