Its a pity that a decade and more of hyperactivity, speculation and noise in cryptofinance will not leave much to show for it but the smoldering ruins of bizarre house-of-cards.<p>We have financial systems that are certifiably broken, there are countless ideas about how to fix them, the digital era makes new ideas easy to explore and everybody would objectively be better off with some genuine innovation<p>yet all we've got is this manic obsession spawned by bitcoin that has no economic objective whatsoever.<p>If that is "efficient allocation of capital" one wonders what inefficiency looks like.
Nothing to see here. This is a reputed and transparent financial institution. The government is just jealous of having competition.../s<p>Binance has no known headquarters or transparent books. If you keep money there and you lose it, it's your fault. The same applies to Tether. You're only betting on trust instead of regulations, which never bodes well in the long run.<p>As a side note, Binance was founded in 2017 and grew to process hundreds of billions of dollars in transactions in a few years. In a hypothetical world as the CEO of such company, how would I even handle such growth without my mind exploding?
> "the term ‘deposit’ is a communication term, it’s not an indication of the technical treatment of the funds"<p>That seems like a pretty terrible answer from binance. It's like they are saying, "We're not commingling customer funds and company revenue! We're defrauding our customers by misrepresenting purchases as deposits!"
Reading these comments on this radical anti-crypto forum makes me always think of "the rumours of [Bitcoin's] death have been greatly exaggerated."<p>While I don't have a Twitter profile with laser eyes just yet, I enjoy seeing what I think is a technological and political game changer just chugging along, uncaring of scams, maxis, haters, governments, volatility.<p>I am surprised that few can notice how impressive it is for a currency with limited usability and extreme volatility to <i>still</i> be worth something, improving and growing. Because at one point, all the concerns one has about it will have been solved, and, as economists love to say, good money tends to drive out bad money. The Internet is still in need of its digital cash.<p>So I enjoy seeing all the Ponzi schemers, con artists and grifters get their comeuppance, but would also love to see the crypto-Luddites inhabiting this forum to be proven wrong eventually. Because Bitcoin doesn't care, Bitcoin still goes brrr.
"Binance, commingled customer funds with company revenue in 2020 and 2021, in breach of U.S. financial rules"<p>Guess it is fortunate for them they are not a US company governed by U.S. financial rules.
For all the great promises and actually great ideas behind using cryptography to ensure efficient flow of funds... it has become scammers' paradise.
Color me surprised.<p>There is no accountability or recourse of any kind in cryptoland. You and your money are totally at the mercy and trust of the exchanges.
The big risk for Binance is AML. If they’re violating U.S. sanctions, they’re liable to having their funds frozen and ability to access dollars in blocked.
> Binance’s website told customers their dollar transfers were “deposits” that would be “credited” to their trading accounts in the form of BUSD. Customers were told they could “withdraw” their deposits as dollars. These representations created the expectation that clients’ funds would be safeguarded in the same way as traditional cash deposits, the former regulators said.<p>So this makes sense to me in that users buy a deposit dollars to buy a shitcoin, but the deposit and purchase are a single operation. If I buy BUSD and then I want to withdrawn, I need to sell my BUSD back to Binance, and it it's value has drifted down, then I will get less dollars. How is that commingling and how is there ab expectation of safeguarding deposits?
I never understood why commingling was illegal.<p>Instead, simply require that if any customer funds and corporate funds are in the same account, then customers have priority in any liquidation of the contents of that account.<p>Then, companies have an incentive to separate their funds, but don't need to.
The content in article doesn't even satisfy the headline/title. The quotes in the article specifically state what the accounts are for but the author hand-waves on what "could" be if many hypotheticals are reality. Do better Reuters.
There is no business advantage to co-mingling funds...<p>So why do it? The only benefit appears to be that you don't need to do precise/accurate accounting and it's easier to hide fraud.
Most crypto grifters have cashed out, moved on to other projects, and are keen for people to forget that chapter.<p>There is still a monumental amount of notional markups that need to be erased - this is not a real market and there is no real price discovery. The real $ have been round tripped many times over, I don't think there's a single "stablecoin" out there that's worth any constant amount.