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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

Coinbase and Binance acted/acts very differently. Binance basically throw their hands in the air saying "well, whatever, it's illegal so whatever we do is illegal, so lets just do whatever" while Coinbase been acting as they are trying to follow the law as much as they could, while still operating an exchange.

Not saying one is more illegal/legal than the other, but they certainly acted differently.

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Yes, but Coinbase deals in lots of tokens that the SEC claims are "securities," so their business model may not survive.

I don't think it's possible to make money like a traditional bank or brokerage with cryptocurrency, none of it is sticky and the users can go around you. Thus the "security but not a security" get rich quick FOMO schemes.

Do you have any insights into why they act like this? Is it the founders vision?

Coinbase acts like this because it was founded from day one to serve the US market, and everything that it has done has been to invest millions of dollars a year into complying with US law. Coinbase has only in the past couple months, started expanding internationally so they don't die immediately in case the US regulatory system decides to cannibalize them.

Binance acts like this because complying with US law is ridiculously expensive. Binance cares most about serving the remaining 95% of humanity that does not live in the US. Maybe seven years or so ago they really started shifting things around so their US services are expendable, and could be jettisoned at any moment if US regulators start biting.

Both are entirely reasonable strategies, and it's why I, as a US citizen, moved everything I had in Binanace away 7 or so years ago, and only ever do anything custodial with Coinbase. Back in the before times, I had accounts across multiple global exchanges so I could run arbitrage bots etc, but now it's basically Coinbase or nothing when it comes to custodial exchanges.

Binance is relatively new, it was founded only 6 years ago, in 2017.

> Binance cares most about serving the remaining 95% of humanity that does not live in the US.

That totally explains why they put so much effort into catering for US whales.

Yeah, You don't do regular trade with the other 95% without the approval of the United States financial system, yay global hegemony.

That’s the strategy they explicitly chose. Probably because of the founder’s preference or vision. They wanted to position themselves as the legal crypto exchange which is a great differentiation in that market.

> position themselves as the legal crypto

Not saying that it couldn't be, but the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

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