Binance is fucked
somereverie.substack.com
somereverie.substack.com
What am I missing here?
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.
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.
Crypto sits on the border of greater-fool investing and Ponzi schemes.
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.
Look at FTX, Celsius et al, lots of people called FUD when issues were raised there...
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.
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).
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.
Sorry about that.
I totally agree with you. I just don't agree with the use of the word "fucked". My related comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34014786
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.
"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.
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.
- "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
Many of those things are not mentioned in the article at all, so thanks for adding additional information.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Binance Withdrawals Slow After Record Customer Outflows" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-15/withdrawa...
Hundreds of millions are leaving a day, but not the billions
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.
- 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.
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.
(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..."?
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).
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.
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?
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.
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.
That’s the issue
Did you withdraw from all your other accounts or just Binance / crypto
Once the true believers leave who replaces them ?
> 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.
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!
"He's such an authentic guy, raw math genius, doesn't wear suits or know how to talk corporate bullshit."
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.
The problem is you are competing with exchanges that make leveraged bets using customer funds and so can have lower fees.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Binance might not be fucked, but its impossible to know for sure, right now.
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.
How do people pronounce this? BUS-Dee? "Busty"? "Bus-ded"? "Busted"?
A stable coin prounounced “busty” would definitely be at an advantage with crypto bros.
> ...
> could Binance be next?
If Binance crashes it will be part of bigger crash. Crypto is basically type of 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.
What exactly does WhatsApp assemble? Or where do I get customer service in person for WhatsApp?
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?
So there’s that.
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.
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.