Binance says banking partner will stop processing SWIFT transfers under $100K

Binance was outsourcing parts of regulatory issues to their bank and they decided it's not worth their effort anymore.

Just another proof that crypto exists on the same planet as the rest of us.

The interesting thing I think is what happens to those USDT after the payment?

Or are there "black market" exchanges that would accept a transfer into their digital wallet and pay out cash, so these Argentinians can buy bread?

aka

bank -> exchange/crypto (in/purchase)

then sell crypto on exchange, transfer to bank

I guess the next move would be opening offshore accounts to accept payments.

And what do those developers pay for in USDT?

It's Argentina. Read about its economy. To use it as an example is somewhat disingenuous. The government rations foreign currency in something like a few hundred USD per month per person I think. If cryptocurrency is another way to work around legal inconveniences, so what.

I'm not sure about Argentina specifically but from most of these cases I know personally they don't even use Binance for conversion, there are local money changers that trade hard currency for depreciating (t)rash, this was true even before Bitcoin & co when people still kept paper dollars under their mattress or in the bank. Those who think this will go away with regulation and bans are even more delusional than the folks who thought that alcohol or drugs can simply be banned and all will be fine. Financial security is a basic need, it's part of our drive for survival.

Binance is mostly used by speculators/retail traders, not people who actually use cryptocurrencies. I get the joke that Bitcoin people say everything's good for Bitcoin, but in this case it may actually be true. Binance isn't a good company and people have been concerned about their huge market share in exchanges for a long time. Binance isn't pro Bitcoin, Ethereum and other such networks. They heavily push their own coins and solutions which aren't decentralized. It's only slightly better for the ecosystem then FTX probably, in the sense that they're not outright stealing user funds - at least that we know of.

Blur your eyes enough and any "thing" in an economic system is (at least) one of: Consumable, Utilitarian, Currency, or an Asset. The fun thing about economics is: which category some Thing lands in depends as much on its Design as its Perception; cars are generally Utilitarian, somewhat Consumable, but rare ones could be classified as Assets. Houses are, generally, Utilitarian Assets in the United States; but in many countries they're Utilitarian Consumables. Perception matters.

Critical characteristics of an asset: it has a dynamic market-priced value denominated in a currency; that market has a meaningful level of liquidity to support its actors; and its actors, to varying degrees, Perceive the value of this asset as priced to that currency to increase over time.

There are obviously a ton of different, diverse voices in every community, but a big problem the "crypto is money" crowd has had is that, traditionally, crypto has been perceived as an Asset, not a Currency; even though its functionally good at being one. The vast majority of actors in the crypto economic system perpetuate this; we talk about Ethereum as it is priced to USD, we talk about Bitcoin going down 20%, etc.

There's an argument to be made, though I don't totally believe it, that forcing crypto to become more divorced from traditional currencies could, especially outside of the developed US-led western world, force it into a place where it starts looking less like an asset and more like a currency. The recent scandals, schemes, and restrictions concerning traditional-to-crypto bridge systems are all doing a fairly good job of perpetuating this; but this ultimately comes down to what you mean by "good for Bitcoin". None of what has happened to crypto over the past two years will be good for its USD-denominated market price. But; its utility as a currency hasn't changed, and would actually become more stable as perception on its purpose changes and its exit liquidity reduces.

To spin a metaphor: Britain formed the US as a colony, and in the early years the US was tremendously reliant on trade and resources from Britain. With that reliance came a natural cap on the US's ability to grow; and the conditions of that reliance (e.g. taxes) eventually made the relationship unsustainable. Severing that relationship was bloody and ugly; but now, the US is far more powerful. In this metaphor, that relationship is the traditional-to-crypto bridge; and severing it is a reduction of traditional-to-crypto market liquidity.

To be clear, I'm not arguing this will be good for crypto no matter the camp you're in. Just that, this would be the argument if you are in the crypto-is-money camp. My opinion is: crypto-as-money is still far, far too nascent; the world's assetization of crypto over the past decade has mostly destroyed any hope of it becoming money without some kind of civilization-level shock to existing money systems (which would be just as likely to impact the vast network of computer systems necessary to keep crypto running). And even if it did happen, at any level of significance, there are no existing crypto systems I'm aware of which would actually make Healthy Money at a country/regional/global macroeconomic scale (not remotely high-scale enough & too much deflation).

Stopped by bank: this could indicate there are more regulation to come in near future Stopped by Biance: is there a problem with the platform

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34472790.

It's true that the comment you were replying to was generic and therefore not good, but yours was repetitive generic flamebait and therefore much worse. Please don't post like that here. We want curious conversation.