Now I challenge you to find any broker on the planet that can promise instant FX swap settlement on the same day for a cash account.
Don't compare apples and bananas.
Don't compare apples and bananas.
If I deposit Shmollars to a regulated brokerage they will hold my Shmollars in Shmollar denominated account and upon request will instantly (subject to technicalities of the transfer) transfer those Shmollars back. No FX swap needed.
Now if they convert those Shmollars to anything else without my explicit request then they are no longer a brokerage and more comparable to an unregulated bank. Which is what Binance apparently did.
And show me one broker that refused, regardless of transaction fees or other contractual stuff, customer wothdraels of funds. Other than those brokers that actually "lost" customer funds. Which is, by the way, also fraud.
You don't get to define what is a bank, and "anyone holding my money" is definitely far from the definition of a bank.
USDC is _not_ USD. When you deposit 100 USDC to Binance and ask to withdraw USD, you are effectively making an FX swap between two currencies, even if these currencies are 1:1 pegged.
Again, there is simply no broker on the planet that will do that instantaneously. USD is 1 day settlement, you just won't get any better than that, unless the broker accepts to take the counterparty risk of paying you upfront. No existing broker will do that for any substantial amount.
Most banks pause withdrawals every night. They are only open during the day. You can't just show up at 2 am and be able to withdraw 10 million dollars.
It is not like Binace is limiting cash withdrawls, they a halting wire trabsfers. For me that's a dead sign the money isn't there anymore.
Which is what is happening to Binance.
Binance has a bank teller, but he's telling you "uh hold on we need to buy your money from another teller that's sleeping because we don't actually have it. Do you want to get our monopoly money instead?"
Binance is about to pull the rug.
ATMs at my bank in Germany were down because of a strike.
If a crypto exchange just disables withdrawals of one asset, users technically still can sell it for BTC, ETH or another stablecoin and withdraw that.
Sometimes my banking website is down for maintenance.
Disclaimer: not defending Binance, not into crypto, just a note.
As soon as a bank fails to provide audited balance sheets, authoroties can step in and halt operations. Mainly to make sure customers deposits are still there and can be withdrawn by the legal owners. It is almost hilarious how Crypto is relearning, at a redicioulous pace, all the lessons tradotional finance and banks learned over the last 100 odd years. And still fails to see that all the answers are already there. In a sense, it is almost peak start-up cliche disruption. Can almost be a good thing so.