Regulated activity here refers to futures and options trading, which was indeed unavailable on Binance for UK residents for a while now. Spot trading is a different story.
Their uk banking partner for faster payments is withdrawing from there relationship with binance in May. Wire transfers unaffected. Continuation of operation chokepoint.
"Starting Monday afternoon, new users will no longer be able to open accounts with GBP deposits on the platform.
"We regret to inform you that our GBP fiat partner, Skrill Limited, has informed us that it will stop offering GBP flat services, namely deposits and withdrawals via Faster Payments and card, to Binance users," the email read.
The suspension of GBP deposits and withdrawals will commence on May 22 and those who make any GBP deposits after that day will be refunded within seven working days, according to Binance."
> A monetary fund created by the Binance exchange that holds 10% of all trading fees to indemnify customers in case the exchange is hacked. The term "safu" is also used to imply safe.
I didn't know about that. I wonder how much money and/or tokens this is, in what amounts, and whether Binance can prove it (separate from other funds).
How can we be sure that what's in those wallets is 10% of what it should be rather than 1%? AFAIK, none of the documents from Binance are public, especially regarding their finances.
Not sure I understand. WalletA has $300m BUSD and WalletB has $420m BTC. Both wallets are 'owned' by Binance. This is lower than the $1b funding on Jan 29th, 2022, but it is still a significant amount of "real" (if you believe crypto has value) funds. This is just an insurance fund that we are talking about here.
I think you're referring to the rest of Binance proof-of-reserves, which are here. Note, I fully realize this isn't perfect.
"Binance’s SAFU began in 2018 by allocating 10% of the trading fee into a fund that is solely dedicated to backing up user holdings in the case of an incident. In February of this year, the fund hit $1 billion for the first time."
The crypto industry has basically done a speed run of the history of banking and finance over the last decade or so.
But the safeguards and regulations that governments put in place for money are mostly absent for crypto. It should remain this way. I want to see how far crypto can go without government regulations and protections.
You're not making any real argument here, so I can't exactly refute it.
Proof of Work is a means of preventing any one actor from controlling bitcoin. Proof of Work is energy intensive, but the currency exists in a government resistant manner without the use of guns because of Proof of Work.
> Proof of Work is a means of preventing any one actor from controlling bitcoin.
No. It does not prevent majority attacks.
It has also been very effective as a mean to enforce an oligarchy of those who have the hardware and made billions, compared to those who did not and who were at the mercy of fluctuations. It makes sense from a perverse right-wing libertarian point of view, but it has nothing to do with democratisation or taking the power away from the government.
> those who have the hardware and made billions, compared to those who did not and who were at the mercy of fluctuations.
I don't know what you could even mean. Having hardware just means you can mine BTC. Miners still deal with price fluctuations, and in no way have they been able to control or print BTC.
> ...it has nothing to do with democratisation or taking the power away from the government.
If the government couldn't take limitless loans from the Fed which creates debt from nothing -- a fancy way of saying print money -- if the government couldn't print money it would have to tax for it's expenditure and would be naturally constrained in it's power.
I honestly can't understand any of your positions and can only believe you're incredibly uniformed about the reality of money, power, and the genisis of and technology behind many crypto currencies.
Yes, it's a funny joke and all, but really it is made to resist that as well. And what I mean by that is that it's a currency you can use without a bank and is not controllable by those with wrenches.
Effectively every transaction done today is done without guns or laws. I've certainly haven't had to threaten anyone with litigation to purchase a cup of coffee. To believe that there is chaos without both is a sad myth.
> The crypto industry has basically done a speed run of the history of banking and finance over the last decade or so.
Does that mean it'll eventually eclipse and live in front of the current timeline of banking, so we'll see banking and finance following the crypto industry at one point, repeating the same mistake that happens in cryptocurrencies?
Ah, it seems you're one of many who confuses "crypto" with cryptography and cryptocurrency. Cryptography is used for encrypting your files, not cryptocurrency. But it's a easy mistake to make so don't feel bad over it.
They're referencing the fact that crypto is famously used as a payment mechanism by entities that hold people/companies to ransom by encrypting their data against their will.
Attackers who encrypt files and demand payment famously demanded cryptocurrency, in part because of the "transactions cannot be reversed" property and the (pseudo-)anonymity.
As banking transactions can be reversed and are as opposite of anonymous as is practically possible, it would be (darkly) amusing if a traditional bank did that, precisely because the damage would be undone and the guilty parties trivially identified.
Literally the only reason ransomware is a thing is because of cryptocurrency.
Every oil pipeline, school, hospital, farm, old age home that's ransomed is 100% thanks to Bitcoin and its progeny. But hey, at least it's found a use case.
> One of the first ransomware attacks ever documented was the AIDS trojan (PC Cyborg Virus) that was released via floppy disk in 1989. Victims needed to send $189 to a P.O. box in Panama to restore access to their systems, even though it was a simple virus that utilized symmetric cryptography.
This is a really bad comparison: ransomeware restricts your data involuntarily. DRM restricts the creator’s data at their request with your voluntary agreement.
Not really: that incident got a huge amount of backlash and cost them a lot of money because it wasn’t informed or voluntary. Outside of Sony BMG’s senior management, nobody thought that was acceptable.
I suspect it means that central banks will issue their own digital currencies to enforce negative interest rates. That will break the lower bound and allow economic stimulation from deflationary conditions.
As Taleb said on Balaji Srinivasan's comment on Fed not communicating about the rate increases earlier. If crypto people feel that the losses are because of Fed's actions, then they should also agree that the profits are because of Fed'a actions.
This argument format - "if X is responsible for a decrease in Y, then not X is responsible for any increase in Y" - is plainly false and silly in any case it is applied, including this one.
Isn't it obvious? If the fire was responsible for burning down the house, then the fire must have also built it.
Feels close to the theory behind homeopathy. If something can trigger some symptom in a healthy person, then the same something can revert it in a sick person. They just remove any trace of it from the medicine to increase the effect.
English isn't my first language either, and I know how confusing it can be, so let me help here.
Here is the quote from the post: "If crypto people feel that the losses are because of Fed's actions, then they should also agree that the profits are because of Fed's actions". As we know, Fed's actions have changed: from providing "cheap" or almost free money (rate was something like 0.08%) to much more expensive ~4.5% now. It wouldn't be a huge leap of reason to assume that at least some of the impressive growth of crypto was driven by insanely low interest rates. But that's just my opinion, feel free to keep comparing monetary policy to homeopathy.
I understand the point, and obviously interest rates influence pretty much everything and anything. Stocks, tech salaries, housing prices, infrastructure projects, unemployment etc, they are all affected by central banks.
But that's not all, otherwise they'd perfectly align with interest rates, and stagflation would've been impossible, just as whatever it is that we have now.
If you look closely, it's the idea that "if X caused Y, it must have also caused !Y" that I compared to homeopathy, not the idea that monetary policy exists.
I think a lot of people would agree with that statement. FED is responsible for a lot of profits, both in the equity market and definitely in the crypto asset market.
Binance is a centralized service which allows people to buy cryptocurrencies, but which is not strictly necessary to use in order to use cryptocurrencies.
People can use decentralized exchanges like Bisq if they want to avoid these issues.
EDIT: Remember how Hackernews was supposed to be a community which has a focus on software development, and thus finding technical solutions to problems of users?
Now it seems we're more about bashing people for using the wrong technology? Advocating for a technical solution to their problems is disapproved of?
Grocery stores aren’t necessary - you can grow your own food, dentists aren’t necessary - you can pull your own teeth, etc. It just seems like many people use exchanges and that’s what (at least partially) crypto is now.
Cryptocurrencies were meant as a "grow your own food" thing in the first place, they are supposed to be decentralized.
Hence it does not seem logical to go to a "grow your own food" subthread and wonder why it makes a point about store-bought food not being grown at home.
As with all things in life, a golden rule applies:
If you don't like it then don't use it, that's ok!
It seems more like a case of someone inventing tomatoes and getting mad that industrial farms starts planting them. That’s not tomatoes! It’s supposed to be decentralized!
Often the thing that’s envisioned by the creators is not the final say on market fit
Worse than that. It's like people whose fortune is tied up in tomato plants insisting that none of the people eating tomatoes or exporting them or making sauces with them should be considered anything to do with the tomato industry
If there were no exchanges to provide a friction-free way for speculators and suckers to buy Bitcoins and Bitcoin recipients to turn them into spendable cash, there would be virtually no demand to buy or accept goods for Bitcoins, and the supply of Bitcoins exceeding the demand for them would obviously render them useless as a "store of value"
The golden rule doesn't apply here. Criminals are actively using cryptocurrencies to commit many crimes including tax fraud, money laundering, and ransomware. That harms everyone, at least indirectly, even if we don't use cryptocurrencies ourselves. So tight legal controls are appropriate here.
To draw an analogy, I support the individual right to keep and bear arms. But I don't want criminals to have access to weapons, and we can impose some reasonable rules to prevent that.
At this point "Cryptocurrencies" are only a small, even substantial part of the "Crypto Industry".
The moment general population became aware of "bitcoin" as "something you can buy that'll get more expensive", the whole technology and ideals behind it were overshadowed by speculative investors.
Just because it is centralized, and thus does not follow one of the purported principles of some cryptocurrency enthusiasts, does not mean that it is not both correct and useful to call it part of that industry.
Also: A lot of cryptocurrency enthusiasts (although not all) want and have wanted cryptocurrency to get broader adoption and acceptance. Exchanges are how that is going to happen. If it does happen.
Looking for hard drives in the trash does not scale.
Umm, you do realize that the purveyors of decentralized Ponzi schemes co-opted the word "crypto" from us serious minded folks concerned with cryptography?
Most definitely. SVB had $3B+ of Circle’s deposits for USDC. Just covered dollar for dollar by the US Taxpayers. Can sell all those underwater bonds at face value while the taxpayers issue new bonds at 5%. Crypto just unbanked the banked with the help of the US Gov.
> No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer... Any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund to support uninsured depositors will be recovered by a special assessment on banks, as required by law.
It is inescapable that tax payers will bear the cost of the insurance, if not directly through taxes than indirectly through increased banking fees and reduced rates.
So "consumers" are always said to "pay" as companies "pass through" increased costs due to goods, regulations, etc., but that doesn't apply here to all the taxpayers who use banking and are subject to increased FDIC insurance costs? And taking underwater, low-interest debt on the books at face value costs taxpayers overtime through inflation even if we get "paid back with interest". Why don't private buyers want this debt? Because they'd rather have dollars to buy better paying debt which the taxpayers currently provide. The BTFP will rapidly grow over $25B and be used to recapitalize the banks at taxpayers expense.[1]. Someones got to pay for the unrealized losses if depositors won't take a haircut. [2]
So personally, I fundamentally disagree with the statement "no losses borne by the taxpayer," believe this is used to obfuscate the issue, and am sad to see our treasury play this game. But it is standard fare these days, especially when people think they are protecting us from a banking run and the next great depression. But my concern is these measures lead to more economic inequality, populism, and eventual political turmoil.
> So "consumers" are always said to "pay" as companies "pass through" increased costs due to goods, regulations, etc.
It isn’t always said, because it isn’t always true. If the business you’re looking at has profits, then it has pricing power, and the conditions for 100% pass-through don’t exist.
Crypto exchanges seem likely to persist in some form for the foreseeable future. After all, it only takes 1, as "mtgox" was showing many years ago, and Binance shows today, in the sense that it dominates.
And if we look sideways to other 'nefarious online activities' - even after literally decades of concerted efforts, jailings, etc etc, thepir^tebay dotorg is still perfectly present, exactly as pir^tebay-ish as it ever was, along with it's endless host of similars. The only way commercial business ameliorated their effect was, ultimately, to adopt the tech and approach, and be better at it - in the process, displacing the nefarious.
Funny how Kraken/Nexo/Coinbase etc can still manage to maintain sterling deposits and comply with the regulators. I like Binance, but they dropped the ball in the UK market.
It's always very surprising that people are willing to send large sums of money to a website without even having details of the company, address, etc. Crazy.
It’s not surprising at all if you want to trade in-and-out it only takes a few minutes. If they were in the business of stealing the money you send them word would get out pretty fast, so the risk is almost zero.
A company is a legal entity with registration and address (even if that is not necessarily the address of their actual office).
At least in some jurisdictions it is actually mandatory to have this info on the company's website so that people can know who they are doing business with and also where to serve legal documents.
Any website that goes to some effort not to disclose anything has to raise a massive red flag.
The point I was trying to make is that a company's "headquarters" means nothing other than the place they're incorporated.
That "place of incorporation" is a very fluid thing, as it can be changed very quickly to adapt to changing regulations and optimize for rapid changes in the business ecosystem a company operates in.
And therefore: it doesn't mean much.
What really matters is:
- the company's assets financial and non-financial and what jurisdiction has sway over them.
- the people who control the company and what jurisdiction has sway over them
- the company's customers and what jurisdiction has sway over them
In 2023, the people controlling the company may be very mobile as CP has amply demonstrated, the assets can be very hard to control (damn near impossible if crypto, and still quite hard if cash and cash-like).
Where the headquarter actually is is IMO of precious little importance.
People outside the UK: Binance broke UK law by selling OTC crypto derivatives after they were made illegal.
This is why British people see all those “did you use Binance product X after Y date?” ads online. There's a bunch of people taking legal action against Binance UK.
OTC derivates is selling derivates (not direct instruments like tokens or equities or real estate, but rather instruments whose value is derived from a combination of a base instrument and other features, like an expiration date or a target price) to regular people over the counter (OTC).
Derivatives are way more volatile than base instruments, and since crypto is already volatile as a base instrument, crypto derivates are VERY volatile.
Binance have always been shady as fuck. So this doesn't surprise me. I withdrew what little I had deposited there a couple of years back, ater they started their AML/KYC bullshit, to do practically anything on their site.
Cryptocurrency is just an attempt by fraudsters to repeat all of the previous scams on a brand new banking system. It turns out there’s actually a reason we have so many laws.
Crypto bros looked at the Free Banking Era of the U.S. and unironically thought that would be great to live through. Unsurprisingly they are the exact demographic who would fantasize that era of the United States as a good time to live in.
Yes, what crypto doesn't have that fiat has is the government bailing them out when you convinced them that you are not system relevant and gamble to a point of failure just to then be considered system relevant. /s
What's the scam? I've used Bitcoin once a week at least since 2013. I put a lot of my hard earned money into it back then, it went up, and for the last 5-6 years when I need a little extra cash for a car, girlfriends mortgage payment, vacation, etc. I sell a little BCH or buy stuff on Amazon through https://Purse.io at a 10-25% discount, plus the buyers usually have Prime so I don't even have a use for a Prime subscription anymore :)
Who did I scam? Bitcoin is digital cash, nothing more nothing less. If someone hurt you using a digital currency I'm sorry but don't take it out on the very concept of digitizing money.
Ok, but please don't post generic flamewar comments to HN. We've been through this a thousand times and repetition is basically the worst thing for curiosity—especially when combined with indignation. That's the toxic cocktail.
144 comments
[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 199 ms ] thread> Binance Markets Limited is not permitted to undertake any regulated activity in the UK.
Year: 2021
"Starting Monday afternoon, new users will no longer be able to open accounts with GBP deposits on the platform.
"We regret to inform you that our GBP fiat partner, Skrill Limited, has informed us that it will stop offering GBP flat services, namely deposits and withdrawals via Faster Payments and card, to Binance users," the email read.
The suspension of GBP deposits and withdrawals will commence on May 22 and those who make any GBP deposits after that day will be refunded within seven working days, according to Binance."
I believe the acronym is SNAFU, not SAFU. :P
Different acronym :)
> Secure Asset Fund for Users
> A monetary fund created by the Binance exchange that holds 10% of all trading fees to indemnify customers in case the exchange is hacked. The term "safu" is also used to imply safe.
The wallet addresses are linked on this page:
https://academy.binance.com/en/glossary/secure-asset-fund-fo...
I think you're referring to the rest of Binance proof-of-reserves, which are here. Note, I fully realize this isn't perfect.
https://www.binance.com/en/proof-of-reserves
There is also some interesting compliance stuff going on in Ceffu.
https://www.binance.com/en/blog/ecosystem/ceffu-formerly-bin...
https://www.ceffu.com/blog/ceffus-core-solution-achieves-soc...
https://www.ceffu.com/blog/ceffu-obtains-cold-storage-insura...
I believe that the OP was incorrect in their statement. It was originally allocated with 10%, not stated to be maintained at 10%.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-tops-up-safu-fund-at-...
"Binance’s SAFU began in 2018 by allocating 10% of the trading fee into a fund that is solely dedicated to backing up user holdings in the case of an incident. In February of this year, the fund hit $1 billion for the first time."
But the safeguards and regulations that governments put in place for money are mostly absent for crypto. It should remain this way. I want to see how far crypto can go without government regulations and protections.
We have seen enough of that: one rug-pull and scam after the other. Governments are stepping in with crypto precisely because of all the scams.
I'm still totally reeling from the XMR rug pull. Oh, wait...
Just because many are scams, doesn't mean there are no principled crypto currencies.
God forbid one should have to perform due diligence and actually think a bit about their currency.
There were other attempts at digital currency before BTC, but they were all taken down by people with guns.
That's kinda the whole point. That's why BTC uses energy. It's a means of resistance to people with guns.
That logic makes about as much sense as using crypto currencies in general.
Proof of Work is a means of preventing any one actor from controlling bitcoin. Proof of Work is energy intensive, but the currency exists in a government resistant manner without the use of guns because of Proof of Work.
No. It does not prevent majority attacks.
It has also been very effective as a mean to enforce an oligarchy of those who have the hardware and made billions, compared to those who did not and who were at the mercy of fluctuations. It makes sense from a perverse right-wing libertarian point of view, but it has nothing to do with democratisation or taking the power away from the government.
> those who have the hardware and made billions, compared to those who did not and who were at the mercy of fluctuations.
I don't know what you could even mean. Having hardware just means you can mine BTC. Miners still deal with price fluctuations, and in no way have they been able to control or print BTC.
> ...it has nothing to do with democratisation or taking the power away from the government.
If the government couldn't take limitless loans from the Fed which creates debt from nothing -- a fancy way of saying print money -- if the government couldn't print money it would have to tax for it's expenditure and would be naturally constrained in it's power.
I honestly can't understand any of your positions and can only believe you're incredibly uniformed about the reality of money, power, and the genisis of and technology behind many crypto currencies.
Good thing they weren't built to resist laws made by people with 5$ wrenches /s
https://xkcd.com/538/
Not at all. Otherwise they’d be truly anonymous. People with guns know how to parse the blockchain and how to find you if they need.
And as for BTC, the lightning network will add a level of anonymity as well.
Further, even if people with guns can track you, at least the people with guns can print more BTC or XMR to buy still more guns with.
Does that mean it'll eventually eclipse and live in front of the current timeline of banking, so we'll see banking and finance following the crypto industry at one point, repeating the same mistake that happens in cryptocurrencies?
But it would be funny if banks started encrypting my files and demanding ransom.
They're making a jab at a large usage of cryptocurrency: payment for ransomware exploits
As banking transactions can be reversed and are as opposite of anonymous as is practically possible, it would be (darkly) amusing if a traditional bank did that, precisely because the damage would be undone and the guilty parties trivially identified.
Every oil pipeline, school, hospital, farm, old age home that's ransomed is 100% thanks to Bitcoin and its progeny. But hey, at least it's found a use case.
> One of the first ransomware attacks ever documented was the AIDS trojan (PC Cyborg Virus) that was released via floppy disk in 1989. Victims needed to send $189 to a P.O. box in Panama to restore access to their systems, even though it was a simple virus that utilized symmetric cryptography.
[1] https://www.crowdstrike.com/cybersecurity-101/ransomware/his...
Not your ability to keep your Ledger safe under your birdbath.
That's speculation 101.
He likes gambling too and I try to tell him it’s the same.
Feels close to the theory behind homeopathy. If something can trigger some symptom in a healthy person, then the same something can revert it in a sick person. They just remove any trace of it from the medicine to increase the effect.
But that's not all, otherwise they'd perfectly align with interest rates, and stagflation would've been impossible, just as whatever it is that we have now.
If you look closely, it's the idea that "if X caused Y, it must have also caused !Y" that I compared to homeopathy, not the idea that monetary policy exists.
Binance is a centralized service which allows people to buy cryptocurrencies, but which is not strictly necessary to use in order to use cryptocurrencies.
People can use decentralized exchanges like Bisq if they want to avoid these issues.
EDIT: Remember how Hackernews was supposed to be a community which has a focus on software development, and thus finding technical solutions to problems of users?
Now it seems we're more about bashing people for using the wrong technology? Advocating for a technical solution to their problems is disapproved of?
and linux is gnu/linux
.... now get off my lawn? dunno
Hence it does not seem logical to go to a "grow your own food" subthread and wonder why it makes a point about store-bought food not being grown at home.
As with all things in life, a golden rule applies:
If you don't like it then don't use it, that's ok!
Often the thing that’s envisioned by the creators is not the final say on market fit
I merely care about the fact that the tomatoes are being called non-industrial even though they are 100% factory grown.
I.e. Binance is not "crypto".
If there were no exchanges to provide a friction-free way for speculators and suckers to buy Bitcoins and Bitcoin recipients to turn them into spendable cash, there would be virtually no demand to buy or accept goods for Bitcoins, and the supply of Bitcoins exceeding the demand for them would obviously render them useless as a "store of value"
To draw an analogy, I support the individual right to keep and bear arms. But I don't want criminals to have access to weapons, and we can impose some reasonable rules to prevent that.
The moment general population became aware of "bitcoin" as "something you can buy that'll get more expensive", the whole technology and ideals behind it were overshadowed by speculative investors.
I don't care what you call it, calling the centralized Binance exchange "crypto" is just not accurate.
They don't deserve to co-opt the word.
Looking for hard drives in the trash does not scale.
> No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer... Any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund to support uninsured depositors will be recovered by a special assessment on banks, as required by law.
1: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1337
So personally, I fundamentally disagree with the statement "no losses borne by the taxpayer," believe this is used to obfuscate the issue, and am sad to see our treasury play this game. But it is standard fare these days, especially when people think they are protecting us from a banking run and the next great depression. But my concern is these measures lead to more economic inequality, populism, and eventual political turmoil.
[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/mone... [2] https://am.jpmorgan.com/content/dam/jpm-am-aem/global/en/ins...
It isn’t always said, because it isn’t always true. If the business you’re looking at has profits, then it has pricing power, and the conditions for 100% pass-through don’t exist.
That'll be a market contraction of 1000x. The uses of crypto will then be extremely limited.
I think it's safe to say that exchanges are crypto for most people.
Crypto exchanges seem likely to persist in some form for the foreseeable future. After all, it only takes 1, as "mtgox" was showing many years ago, and Binance shows today, in the sense that it dominates.
And if we look sideways to other 'nefarious online activities' - even after literally decades of concerted efforts, jailings, etc etc, thepir^tebay dotorg is still perfectly present, exactly as pir^tebay-ish as it ever was, along with it's endless host of similars. The only way commercial business ameliorated their effect was, ultimately, to adopt the tech and approach, and be better at it - in the process, displacing the nefarious.
To be more accurate...
Crypto: Going from banking the unbanked to centralized entities attempting to unbank the newly unbankable!
Where are they headquartered is of interest to many people (for reporting on FBAR and/or taxes).
Storing your money with them on the other hand..
If I put up a stall in the street with a large "Bank" noticeboard no-one would give me wads of cash. Yet online that's exactly what people do.
>so the risk is almost zero
This article, and countless other crypto stories, demonstrate that the risk is not zero. It's just that it may takes some time to manifest itself.
What does it mean to "have a headquarter" in 2023?
At least in some jurisdictions it is actually mandatory to have this info on the company's website so that people can know who they are doing business with and also where to serve legal documents.
Any website that goes to some effort not to disclose anything has to raise a massive red flag.
I mean, they are optional, if you are thief or criminal, but perhaps I've given the answer away.
That "place of incorporation" is a very fluid thing, as it can be changed very quickly to adapt to changing regulations and optimize for rapid changes in the business ecosystem a company operates in.
And therefore: it doesn't mean much.
What really matters is:
In 2023, the people controlling the company may be very mobile as CP has amply demonstrated, the assets can be very hard to control (damn near impossible if crypto, and still quite hard if cash and cash-like).Where the headquarter actually is is IMO of precious little importance.
This is why British people see all those “did you use Binance product X after Y date?” ads online. There's a bunch of people taking legal action against Binance UK.
Derivatives are way more volatile than base instruments, and since crypto is already volatile as a base instrument, crypto derivates are VERY volatile.
Who did I scam? Bitcoin is digital cash, nothing more nothing less. If someone hurt you using a digital currency I'm sorry but don't take it out on the very concept of digitizing money.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The string of collapses until now have been warning enough.
No crying if you lose your money when the next one goes pop.