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Binance survived 2018 crypto crash. Stuff described in blog post happens every 10 months or so.

If Binance crashes it will be part of bigger crash. Crypto is basically type of tech stock now.

> Crypto is basically tech stock now

I don't see Foxconn workers assembling bored apes, and I don't see ape wrangling genius bars in all the shopping centres.

Crypto is basically not tech stock, ever.

You cherrypicked examples where there's a physical element to the transaction.

What exactly does WhatsApp assemble? Or where do I get customer service in person for WhatsApp?

WhatsApp charges businesses for access to its API, and also has a payments platform in emerging markets. It assembles and sells software products.
If WhatsApp disappeared today, over a billion people would lose their main communication channel with friends and families, and millions of businesses in emerging markets would lose a primary sales channel.

If crypto disappeared today, what would be the real-world effect? How many people would be inconvenienced in some other sense than "bummer, I hoped this would make me rich"? How many actual businesses would be impacted?

Well actually, you would throw a major wrench in the works of most ransomware operations.

So there’s that.

I've seen some concern voiced over counterparty risk in private credit contagion into public markets. Counterparty relationships are not uniformly visible across the financial landscape, so it is conceivable someone accepts a counterparty position on an instrument where crypto is pledged as an asset. This instrument is presented as a different asset obscuring the crypto, a tower of downstream instruments are constructed on top of that original instrument, and tranches leak out into a bunch of other more tradfi instruments.

I've yet to see evidence that this is widespread in practice. Though admittedly there is a lot that can go on in private credit that is out of reach from public analytics.

Even if there was contagion risk however, I don't expect extinction level financial system damage. Total global crypto valuation at peak was around $1T USD depending upon who you ask. Global software industry alone is around $10T USD. If crypto goes to zero tomorrow, it would be life-alterting to many people, but most of the world would go on about their lives.

More value has been erased from global equity markets this year than any hypothetical crypto-to-zero scenario, and while the consequences won't be pleasant, in the developed world if you have saved up 1-7 years of living expenses you will barely notice the recession currently inbound.

> Crypto is basically tech stock now.

I feel this is a self-serving cynical take that's in line with the pump-and-dump aspect of crypto: there's this despair in trying to portray all crypto as legitimate investments and businesses when they are all far from it.

Crypto is basically gambling, don't put in more money that you cannot afford to lose.
Unless I'm missing something, there is no actual evidence of "Binance being fucked" in the article other than their "stablecoin" (BUSD) having a lot of activity. Nothing like FTX or the other examples where the price quickly went to zero, and their setups generally being very messy with the hindsight that the mess was evident. And the conclusion of all the speculation is that "Binance is fucked", although there is no indicators (yet?) that that's true.

What am I missing here?

You haven’t missed anything. It’s exactly it. Someone is trying to get some cheap clicks.
> Someone is trying to get some cheap clicks.

It isn't just that. The same network effects that propelled cryptocurrencies and exchanges to the moon are now facing its uglier side. It cuts both ways. There's a chance these currencies and exchanges emerge out of this boom-now-bust cycle stronger than before. Time will tell.

You’re on to something there. Finance is all about trends, and when to follow them versus when to bet against them.

But crypto in particular seems subject to wild extremes of irrationality. It attracts people willing to to ignore fundamentals and move serious money based on faith and intuition.

Finance is really about allocating capital to productive uses.

Crypto sits on the border of greater-fool investing and Ponzi schemes.

More or less agreed, though crypto also borders gold rush investing, which sometimes pans out. Usually not. But sometimes.
You are missing that this is HN and anything bashing crypto reaches the first page no matter how trash it is
Agreed. I'm getting tired of this kind of articles. I've seen nothing in this article to support that "Binance is fucked".

Since there is nothing to support that, I can only assume that the raison d'etre of this article is that the author wants Binance to get fucked, so he's speculating. Because apparently that's how crypto works.

The thing is, with the lack of clarity/audits etc for a lot of organizations in this world, you'll never get clear proof before problems become all too apparent.

Look at FTX, Celsius et al, lots of people called FUD when issues were raised there...

By that logic should we assume that every crypto company who don't do audits that meet your standards is "fucked"?

For instance, do you think Tether is "fucked" too?

I'm not saying that Binance is doing everything great. I have no idea. But isn't saying that Binance is "fucked" a bit much at this time, with the current evidence at hand?

I'm just saying that this is bad journalism.

> By that logic should we assume that every crypto company who don't do audits that meet your standards is "fucked"?

Yes, this is in fact the rationale approach to financial institutions. It is why solidly-run companies invest in audits: to demonstrate, on a regular basis, that they are solvent and stable (not fucked).

Look, I actually agree with the core of your argument. No / bad audits are a red flag to me too. I'm just saying that using the word "fucked" still is speculative and an overstatement. I would use "untrustworthy", "shady", "dangerous" etc, but not "fucked". That's all I'm saying.
That's a fair response, makes sense. Thanks.
I didn't mention the word "fucked" , that was the article, I was making a point about lack of clarity in Binance's financials :)

But yes, if a major financial company can't complete an independent audit to IFRS or similar standards, that's a major red flag. We know major crpyto exchanges can do it as Coinbase is audited by Deloitte's, so it's not that it's not possible.

and yes Tether falls into that category too.

> For instance, do you think Tether is "fucked" too?

Uh, yes!?!

> isn't saying that Binance is "fucked" a bit much at this time

Sort of. The claim is that all the signs are there. A “Binance is fucked” rhetoric may increase the bank run on them, which may fuck them.

The fact that they’re dealing with a bank run, in part out of fear that the same will happen to them as FTX, will increase the probability, all depending on how sound their business is.

If they start freezing accounts, we know we’re hitting bottom.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/13/crypto-exchange-binance-temp...

"Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, paused withdrawals of the stablecoin USDC on Tuesday while it carried out a "token swap." USDC withdrawals were resumed about 8 hours after Binance first announced the pausing of withdrawals. Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, tweeted on Tuesday that the exchange is seeing an increase in withdrawals of USDC."

Strategically timed 8 hour stoppages are not a sign things are going well.

Well, for one $2billion claw back from FTX investment.

CEO says he can whether it via letting lawyers handle it, not very convincing as far as having $2billion handy to hand back via fraud conveyance issues with FTX.

Off the top of my head:

- "A lot of activity" here means people withdrawing on the order of $4 billion from Binance in the last week alone, and that's net (deposits - withdrawals)

- CZ's much-touted Mazars "audit" that was nothing of the sort: liabilities missing entirely, Binance's massive stablecoin holdings missing entirely, only partial coverage of BTC/ETH holdings, sketchy transfers of large amounts into those account before the attestation and out right after, etc. Here's a good summary: https://youtu.be/42VnEndJ9mo

- Numerous regulatory organizations announcing investigations into Binance

- CZ's own leaked private comments about $250k withdrawals of Tether threatening to destabilize crypto as a whole (!?)

- Binance losing an unknown quantity to the FTX collapse, but at the very least a significant fraction of the $500M or so they had in FTT

Your comment is a lot better (and more information dense) than the submission article. Can we change the URL to just point to your comment instead?

Many of those things are not mentioned in the article at all, so thanks for adding additional information.

> Your comment is a lot better (and more information dense) than the submission article. Can we change the URL to just point to your comment instead?

No it’s not. It’s unclear why some of the points are relevant to Binance’s health.

Edit: @rippercushions they are factually correct, but there is no context. With context, the points make even less sense.

Edit 2: @rippercushions Sorry then it’s not on your comment, just the parent’s proposal that it stands alone better than the speculation offered in the article.

I don't suppose you'd like to expand a little on what, exactly, is factually wrong with my comment?

GP was claiming there are "no indicators" that Binance is fucked, so I provided a list of recent things about Binance that sound pretty fucked to me.

It says something negative about crypto and to many people that makes it factually wrong.
That “good summary” video is anything but, and contains numerous incorrect claims, starting with not being aware of differences between tokens and chains. He claims that Binance hasn’t provided any “Token addresses”, when they provided their ETH addresses (that contain tokens).
Huh? The video discusses the ETH holdings covered by the attestation.
If Binance is not running as an unregulated fractional reserve bank, they could be fine. If I am holding a million dollars in customer money and all but a dollar is withdrawn I am fine if I actually have it all in custody.

Somehow I doubt that Binance is that on the level.

Coinbase maybe because they are US based and seem to be run by somewhat sane people.

Coinbase makes their money on the 1% spread they charge. Kraken is in this ballpark too, with a little more variance. Binance, like FTX, charges a tenth of that. If they're not making up for that disparity somewhere, in a not so great way, I'll be quite surprised.

Binance offers margin, with tiers including up to 10x leverage. This is a level you can only typically get to with Treasury securities in the US, which otherwise hearkens back to the 1920s before regulations to avoid this were put in place for very good reason, on securities that are much more stable than cryptocurrencies.

Solvency is dubious at best.

There doesn’t seem to be anything new. But the same reasons I’ve always thought they were fucked- they are attesting things and won’t get audited.

There’s a really simple solution for them and every reputable finance company (and many unreputable ones) - get an audit.

And they’ve dodged it for years. I can’t imagine a situation where I would ever bank with a company that wouldn’t be under regulation or have an independent confirmation of their solvency.

They are fucked in the sense that the only reason to not audit a multi-billion dollar firm that’s based on trust is that they are full of horse apples.

I’m surprised that they’ve lasted this long without blowing up. I hope they pull it out, for the sake of their customers.

- They are leveraged

- There will be a run on them as trust in Crypto is at an all time low

- Even a well run bank will struggle in this situation. Binance is not that.

For me the concern with Binance is that it's the biggest crypto exchange in the world, yet has no geographical base and has (AFAIK) never had a proper audit.

Without more clarity, there's no way anyone can know for sure if all is well or not, and that's not a great place to put your money given there is likely no insurance if it goes wrong.

> [Binance is] the biggest crypto exchange in the world, yet has no geographical base

(Sorry for sounding clueless) they're a company without a physical (street) address?

Are there (m)any instances of legitimate companies without any physical presence? Not even a "Acme Widgets Inc c/o Fred Flintstone Accountants, 123 The High Street, Anytown..."?

AFAIK no, as in there's no "Binance headquarters" you can go to, or write to... The company is apparently registered in the Cayman Islands, but it's pretty easy to register a company there without operations.
> The company is apparently registered in the Cayman Islands

If that's true why would they be coy about it?

There are loads of jurisdictions where every single company invoice has to state the company's registration details (registered number and registered address).

A company being registered somewhere is no more than a PO Box and some paperwork.

My guess about why Binance avoids having a headquarters location would be trying to reduce the risk of regulators and tax authorities paying a lot more attention to them.

> A company being registered somewhere is no more than a PO Box and some paperwork

Quite, which is why it seems so odd for any company to even consider skipping these steps [EDIT: or not wanting to share that they've been done]. Isn't this the kind of basic stuff that founders do in the first week of starting a business?

Yes. Binance cannot be "fucked" by any meaning of the word. CZ claim they store customers' assets one to one. Either this is true, and they're safe, or it's not true, and they're engaging in the same fraud as FTX.

But if they're a fraud, they won't be "fucked" until 1/ they're exposed (some evidence of the fraud is posted somewhere), and 2/ people believe it, and there's a run, and they collapse because of the fraud -- since without the fraud, a run should not cause a collapse.

A simple rise in withdrawals isn't enough to announce their demise.

By this definition, they cannot be "fucked" in any situation - only their customers could get "fucked".
Yeah my comment is unclear. I mean they can't be presently fucked. They may become fucked in the future, if it turns out they were engaging in fraud. But for that to happen, some kind of evidence should be provided, and none has shown up yet.
Thankfully Binance holds their customers' funds 1:1. Except USDC, which they've replaced with a different stablecoin BUSD, which is just like USDC except instead of trusting Circle, it trusts, er... Binance.

Rate limited, so to reply to the gent from Paxos: I did check that out, but:

> Binance-Peg BUSD, which is not issued by Paxos and is not regulated by NYDFS, is a separate product. Binance independently mints Binance-Peg BUSD on other blockchains (e.g., BNB Chain, Polygon and Avalanche) and pegs the tokens to BUSD on a one-to-one basis. This allows holders of both tokens to swap tokens between Ethereum and other blockchains.

From https://paxos.com/busd/

Obviously even if one believes in BUSD, the matter of someone who trusted Circle having their coins transparently replaced with a different coin using a different trust model is concerning.

BUSD is a US New York DFS, the banking regulator, regulated stablecoin. USDC on the other hand is not regulated. Paxos (my employer) issues BUSD, not Binance
Nope, Binance also issues BUSD on its own "Binance Smart Chain" (BSC). Why you would trust this, and why it's called the same thing as the one on the Paxos chain, is beyond me.

https://thefipharmacist.com/binance-peg-busd-vs-busd/

That is true...Paxos only issues the token on Ethereum...I also asked the same question myself..What if binance issues more busd on his own ? I think CZ is under pressure as he has Chinese look (non-western) but major player in crypto which is something not okay for US or west in general. He knows this and it would be too stupid for him to issue arbitrary number of busd tokens to break 1-to-1 peg.

edit: you can also take a look at bnb-chain's pegged token stats. https://github.com/bnb-chain/peg-token-stats/blob/master/202...

If you are purchasing USDC and holding it on Binance, you are probably better off buying BUSD.

If Binance crashes, than both USDC and BUSD will be inaccessible. If Circle crashes, than USDC on Binance will be gone, but not BUSD. As long as Binance doesn't crash, BUSD will be fine.

I work under the assumption that both Circle and Binance are freely using much of their customer's funds, and that Binance has both larger pockets and a larger hole. If I am wrong and someone here is honest, than the above is all-the-more so.

If you keep your BUSD on Ethereum, you would be fine in theory even if Binance is gone.
Why is it so difficult to just create an exchange that charges commissions and nothing more? Target the first 10-20 cryptos with a simple transparent platform and see the money rolling in with minimal risks of ending up naked
Because someone else will come along and create an exchange that offers ponzi-like interest rates and run you of out of business. Also promising never to gamble with the depositors' funds etc
This is kind of Gresham's law for crypto. Bad ethics drive good ethics out of the market. Amusingly, this is often studied in the context of how deregulation led to the S&L crisis, i.e. a direct parallel.
Greed. They start like that, make a well oiled platform to swap cryptos, but then they think: Why not offer something more exciting? Why leave money on the streets? Even if it's risky.
This is essentially what Coinbase is. More like a old school bank (not modern) where your funds are "earmarked" for your account, rather than fucking around with lending it around to get some extra profits.
Without having done much research, isn't that coinbase's market?

Regardless, it costs money to actually comply with laws, do audits, all that, meanwhile you're losing out on a potentially huge revenue stream by not gambling customer funds. As long as things are going well, you'd expect the shady operators to be winning in the short term.

Without having done any research at all I do wonder how reliably anyone could judge evidence that coinbase is in fact that, and not just the same as others, merely being a little more successful in avoiding too-good-to-be-true territory?
This is Coinbase, more or less.

The problem is you are competing with exchanges that make leveraged bets using customer funds and so can have lower fees.

The normalization of this is embarrassing. Can you imagine if Vanguard did this with Grandma’s GE stocks?
I'm not advocating for this situation, just pointing it out. In the case of stocks regulators have stepped in to prevent the highly leveraged competitor from existing at all.
There is no demand for that. Most crypto money is either libertarians who hold use self custody OR people trying to get rich quick who will put their money wherever they can leverage it the most with the highest APR on deposits.
Same reason internet services without ads are so hard to come by. There is always more money to be made by adding creative financial products to the mix. Platforms that resist the urge to get creative charge more and don't reach the same scale as the ones that are doing something a little dodgy on the side.
Welcome to another step along the "banking regulation any%" speedrun crypto is going through.

Banks (and crypto exchanges are that for all purposes) have strict rules on what percentage of customer deposits they have to actually hold and what they can do with the rest.

If that fails there is a huge liquidity market, if that fails the fdic (or local equivalent) comes to the rescue and if that fails the central bank (as a lender of last resort) can contain the failure of a single bank. It's far from perfect but history has proven it quite robust.

Crypto (in this case) decided that all those rules are useless overreach.

because it is not profitable as you may think. The money is in derivatives(liquidations) and it has always been.
The big auditors don't even know what they are looking at and don't want to audit Binance. The CEO said as much on CNBC.

Binance might not be fucked, but its impossible to know for sure, right now.

> The big auditors don't even know what they are looking at and don't want to audit Binance. The CEO said as much on CNBC.

You take this claim at face value?

It’s not that complex. Auditors untangle complex financial setups, that’s their job. They just balk at things like “Hidden, poorly internally labeled ‘fiat@’ account” on the balance sheets.

> Binance Is Fucked

> ...

> could Binance be next?

Typo in the first bullet point “ exchnage”. Otherwise a pretty good piece. Misdirection is a huge red flag.
I was hoping to see new information coming to light instead of a twitter rehash that's already been debunked. My opinion on this is that people are exploiting CZ's lack of training in corporate speak when handling pertinent questions.

Media: What are your liabilities?

CZ: We've never taken any loans so no liabilities besides customer deposits. We have PoR to show for that.

Media: Are you sure?

CZ: Yes, go ahead and ask around

Media: He doesn't even have a handle on his own business. Off with his head!

Isn't this the same excuse that was always given about Bankman-Fried before the depth of his fraud became evident.

"He's such an authentic guy, raw math genius, doesn't wear suits or know how to talk corporate bullshit."

I was part of those withdrawals, had no issues, but precautions after FTX, luckily had no money there.

This is all being stirred up by some crypto twitter "influencers", maybe engagement farming, who knows.

This article does not have the substance to warrant being top of HN at time of writing.

> had no issues, but precautions after FTX

That’s the issue

Did you withdraw from all your other accounts or just Binance / crypto

Once the true believers leave who replaces them ?

just from Binance

> Once the true believers leave who replaces them ?

a new set of greater fools. if you follow crypto twitter you would see there is an almost endless supply. all it takes is a good month for BTC and everything would be forgotten, that's the casino world we are in right now.

It looks like people assumed Binance was in the same position as FTX, there was a run on Binance and they seemed to weather it just fine, perhaps they got lucky or perhaps they aren't committing fraud like SBF.
There’s really no way to tell. If there is a hole and they broadcast that early, there will be a run and they are toast, so, like everyone else so far, they can only continue to service withdrawals until they no longer can. And up to that point, from the outside, things are identical with or without hole.
> "The Binance BUSD stablecoin..."

How do people pronounce this? BUS-Dee? "Busty"? "Bus-ded"? "Busted"?

I always thought of it as BEE-YOU_ES_DEE
In the lead up to the financial crisis, sub-prime MBS deals always had series names like MLST-2006 11 or some such, based on the issuer (typically the initials of the special purpose vehicle), but I always believed the ones with pronounceable series like SALT or CBASS (especially clever) traded better.

A stable coin prounounced “busty” would definitely be at an advantage with crypto bros.

Anyone can explain "the bank is closed" thing? Any legitimacy to this or just CZ attempting to calm the crowd to stop the withdrawls?
This article sounds very desperate.
As a result of rising interest rates they probably wanted to benefit from liquidity. Even though Paxos issues BUSD they most probably have some sort of agreement for sharing interest profit. There is nothing abnormal. In past exchanges closed withdrawals for longer time for various reasons. And most important CZ doesn't seem like on amphetamine.