[HN Gopher] Bittrex to Cease Operations in the US
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Bittrex to Cease Operations in the US
Author : cfcfcf
Score : 78 points
Date : 2023-03-31 19:17 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bittrex.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bittrex.com)
| throwaway4837 wrote:
| I started using Bittrex in 2017 because they had support for
| altcoins I wanted to gamble with. Sadly, over the years they
| abruptly dropped support for coins with barely any notice, and it
| was a pain to keep up with them. While I'm sad to see them go,
| I'm sort of looking forward to being forced to move my coins out
| of their exchange. Unfortunately none of the other exchanges I
| use have support for some of the altcoins I had on Bittrex, so
| I'm either going to have to dump those into BTC/DOGE/etc. or spin
| up my own wallet.
|
| I guess this is good for Bitcoin in the absolute shortest term...
| I expect Bitcoin/maincoin dominance will go up if Bittrex has any
| reasonable volume.
| colesantiago wrote:
| Good.
|
| Crypto has no use case at all and the exchanges harboring these
| speculative tokens needs to be destroyed.
| repomies69 wrote:
| They are only ceasing to operate in US, they will continue to
| serve rest of the world (95.75% of world population).
| Mizoguchi wrote:
| The US has 20% of the global crypto market and it's
| responsible for 40% of all transactions. That's pretty
| significant.
| colesantiago wrote:
| Usually (and in almost all cases) the world follows the US so
| will be not surprised when governments will completely ban
| crypto into the dark web.
| yashg wrote:
| When it comes to crypto regulations though, US is lagging
| behind. Crypto is already taxed as gambling in India and is
| pretty much out of popular discourse. Just one season of
| crypto platforms advertising on India's biggest sporting
| league (IPL) made the regulators sit up and take notice of
| the shady practices and put an end to it. I believe crypto
| is very much dead in China as well.
| gear54rus wrote:
| > Crypto has no use case at all
|
| [citation needed] haha
| teekert wrote:
| I like the podcasting 2.0 ecosystem. With boosting and
| satoshi streaming. Cool usecases of the btc lightning network
| if you ask me.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| financial services, for speculation, is the biggest industry on
| the planet
|
| saying "no use case" and "speculative" in the same sentence is
| always hilarious, yeah, service the speculators
|
| its financial services and entertainment, the latter of which
| is also a big sector and valuable to humans
| colesantiago wrote:
| I'm not sure what use case is a speculative pyramid scheme
| like crypto, where there is no intrinsic value at all.
|
| It is a morally repugnant gambling speculative vice which
| destroys lives and is even worse than fiat.
|
| Not to mention Bitcoin and the like burning the planet trying
| to solve useless puzzles.
| Atlas22 wrote:
| Education is speculative gambling that teaching the student
| will amount to them increasing productivity enough to be
| worth the resources (time, money, supplies) spent educating
| them. Driving is speculative gambling that reaching your
| destination faster will be more profitable than the cost of
| the vehicle, wear and tear, gas/electricity, cost
| associated with risk of car crash. Eating is speculative
| gambling that the one eating will provide more value in
| some way than the value of the food and water they consume.
| colesantiago wrote:
| this laughable line of argument isn't even worth a
| debate, we both no that education, driving and eating
| aren't pyramid/ponzi schemes.
| super256 wrote:
| > I'm not sure what use case is a speculative pyramid
| scheme like crypto, where there is no intrinsic value at
| all.
|
| Modern currencies like USD, EUR, JPY etc. don't have
| intrinsic value either.
|
| > It is a morally repugnant gambling speculative vice which
| destroys lives and is even worse than fiat.
|
| We should ban speculative buying of comics, gaming skins,
| Pokemon cards and, of course, gambling in casinos worldwide
| too. Also, the gambling on Robinhood is morally repugnant
| too, as grown up adults can't be trusted to manage their
| money.
|
| > Not to mention Bitcoin and the like burning the planet
| trying to solve useless puzzles.
|
| The value in solving the puzzles is securing the network
| (no other network is as secure as Bitcoin, see [1]). Gold
| mining uses the same energy amount as BTC. [2] Only 8% of
| Gold of the gold dug up is used for productive means by the
| industry. The rest is bought by speculators, jewelries and
| central banks because it's shiny. [3]
|
| [1] https://howmanyconfs.com/
|
| [2] https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index
|
| [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-
| by-in...
| didibus wrote:
| > Modern currencies like USD, EUR, JPY etc. don't have
| intrinsic value either.
|
| Arguably, they are like ownership into the country's GDP
| and military influence no?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| speculation is a use case, you're grasping for a
| distinction that's not found, and if you find it you'll
| simultaneously be talking about 99% of all transactional
| activity in the world economy.
|
| yes, gambling is a big industry too, why do you keep naming
| use cases that have validation of their value?
| colesantiago wrote:
| What can you do with speculation other than causing
| people to lose their life savings?
|
| What good is there in a so called currency based on
| fictitious tokens created out of thin air and backed by
| completely nothing and adding nothing useful to society?
|
| Even Nvidia agrees:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/26/crypto
| cur...
|
| At least gambling is regulated where as crypto is a
| unregulated decentralised wild west where there is no
| protections whatsoever.
|
| Where is the use case in people losing money in a pyramid
| scheme using crypto tokens?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I'm not convinced you know what you're trying to ask.
| What do you mean by "use case" other than the reasons for
| which people want something? The person you're responding
| to said that people want it so they can speculate and
| gamble with it. You can dislike these vices all you want
| but you're seeming to speak to some objectivity which you
| haven't done much to explain.
| colesantiago wrote:
| We both know the whole point of the crypto use case is to
| become an alternative or a replacement to fiat, to which
| it isn't and cannot be.
|
| Speculation is not a legitimate use case for something
| that aims to become a currency. If I am trying to buy a
| loaf of bread with a crypto token and the price plummets
| and fluctuates wildly for no reason that is backed by
| nothing, it is not useful at all.
|
| You can try and justify crypto all you want, However and
| objectively speaking, there are far too many pyramid
| schemes, far too many ponzi schemes, scams, rugpulls and
| ransomware crypto payments, unregistered ICOs that crypto
| is harbouring to even take seriously after 15 years of
| its existence.
|
| I'm glad the crackdown is happening.
| wslh wrote:
| Ignoring that I don't agree with you, don't you think the
| current financial system is a complete mess? From the technical
| side to the trust side.
| beefield wrote:
| No. Especially compared to known alternatives, very much
| including crypto.
|
| Or then we have a very different definition of "complete
| mess". For the record, I have no reason to doubt the value of
| my savings account fluctuates wildly and the savings account
| is guaranteed by government for my practical purposes. I can
| make all the payments I need to make free/with very modest
| fee. In most cases, for practical purposes, the payments are
| immediate. If I happen to need, I can borrow money against my
| non-money non liquid assets. I can't describe this situation
| as "a complete mess". To my understanding crypto offers
| practically none of these benefits in any kind of robust way.
| This from european perspective.
| Atlas22 wrote:
| Everything you mentioned and implied here is the case for
| every fiat currency also. Using Japanese Yen to buy food at
| a US grocery store is unlikely to be practical. Just as
| trying to use USD in Japan is impractical. The only
| substantial difference is that crypto's practical
| jurisdiction is primarily the internet, with some adoption
| in the "real-world" (shops/services that choose to accept
| crypto). This makes crypto incredibly practical for online
| transactions but only practical for real-world applications
| where it has been adopted. Most crypto payments can be done
| for cheap, quickly (seconds to minutes), in a practically
| trust-less environment (not the case for fiat), and are
| irrevocable (which is a benefit for many). You can borrow
| crypto with crypto lenders against just about anything
| legally enforceable, including your house or car (although
| willing crypto lenders are becoming scarcer and more
| expensive with the increasingly inconsistent regulatory
| behavior of the US Government). A major advantage
| cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum have, is that they
| provide practically trust-less contracts between entities,
| evaluated by code rather than a possibly incompetent or
| compromised judge as you might get in the real-world.
|
| Just FYI, payments in the traditional banking systems are
| very much not immediate, they just appear that way from
| your perspective. The perspective usually breaks down if
| you try to move a large amount of currency around, you will
| get anything from straight up denials, many month waiting
| periods, money getting "lost" in processing for months, and
| large surprise fees. The "immediate" transaction illusion
| you see are just agreements between major financial
| entities to make transactions appear fast but are limited
| volume to reduce banks risk. For example, common credit
| card transactions, no matter how small, are not actually
| cleared for over 150 days. Based on my experience European
| banks are no different although I haven't tried it as often
| as I have in the US.
| jasmer wrote:
| How is the current system 'a mess'?
|
| It powers the whole world. Almost every kind of transaction
| you can think of.
|
| If people would follow the regs most things would work.
|
| I think the biggest issue is transactional drag aka something
| needs to replace VISA, and should be nicer consumer
| protections for personal accounts but for the most part it
| works.
|
| Nothing Crypto has offered is better, not even close.
|
| I suggest someday that may happen, but it will 'feel' much
| more like traditional bakning when it happens.
|
| There is a reason why banking is the most 'buttoned down,
| small-c conservative' industry because oversight, competency
| etc. all of that matters. It's that world.
|
| ... notwithstanding some other issues that would exist with
| crypto as well, such as mortgage lending etc..
| humanizersequel wrote:
| >How is the current system 'a mess'? >It powers the whole
| world.
|
| This is a sentence that could be said at any point in
| history, about any dominant "system", financial or
| otherwise.
|
| How could slavery be a 'a mess'? It powers the whole world.
| How could feudalism be 'a mess'? It powers the whole world.
| How could nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes be 'a mess'? It
| powers the whole world.
| colesantiago wrote:
| We should not be replacing a system with a completely
| destructive and even worse one which is crypto.
|
| Government backed money is the worst form of money, except
| all the others have been tried including crypto.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| On the timescale of money, crypto has not existed long
| enough to say it's been "tried" (or at least not long
| enough to say it's not worth continuing the experiment /
| continuing to try).
|
| What it has done, which seems to exist outside the
| blinkered view, is that for a number of years now, bitcoin
| and some other cryptocurrencies have been very successful
| at being transferable between two parties no matter their
| geographical location and without a third party acting as
| intermediary or authority.
|
| For those who participate, this is an exchange of value.
| For those who don't participate it should be at least seen
| as a half decent proof of concept of something that could
| be used as an exchange of value (money).
| colesantiago wrote:
| > proof of concept
|
| Yet this 'proof of concept' is too slow to be used in the
| real world after 15+ years with little to nobody using it
| at all.
|
| UPI has been available for 6 years with almost 700
| million users and is expanding their network globally.
|
| So even by trying to send money, there is no need for
| crypto at all for this case as this has already been
| improved and done by the current system.
|
| You might as well use Wise, UPI and other regulated money
| transfer services that exist in current system.
|
| I look forward to FedNow removing even more need for
| crypto to exist.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| While the crypto industry has shown itself to be a pillar of
| ethics, engineering and usability?
| joemazerino wrote:
| Yes?
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Crypto does a pretty great job of keeping your hands off of
| other people's money, is that a problem?
| [deleted]
| teekert wrote:
| I have always liked Bittrex. Have been a user for many years now.
| Indeed they've never been hacked and their support is pretty
| good. Sad to see this happen.
|
| Have to say that as an EU based user I feel a bit uneasy about
| this though. Perhaps it's time for some cold wallets or, as I'm
| reading here, a dex.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| How confusing! I thought the headline referred to the ultra-
| bitter chemical that stops kids eating things they shouldn't. But
| that "bitrex" just has one T.
|
| Fun fact, Nintendo Switch cartridges are coated in it.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Sure way to get my older kids to lick the cartridges is to tell
| them about that :)
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Yeah, I don't have a Switch myself but now I'm going to need
| to find a friend's and work out how to slip in a sneaky
| cartridge lick just to have this experience.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I thought that's what it was too! I expected to be reading
| about how they were forced to shut down because the chemical
| was super toxic after extended exposure or something like that.
| barnabee wrote:
| Not a Bittrex user but this makes me genuinely glad not to live
| in the US.
| sdfghswe wrote:
| Imagine being happy for not leaving on the wealthiest nation on
| earth because a specific magic beans trading venue is shutting
| down.
|
| It's like the maga incels work at walmart but complain taxes
| are too high.
| troymc wrote:
| I am in Canada and when I went to their website I found that it's
| not available for me either. I wonder what they do.
| smithcoin wrote:
| @dang can this title have "in the United States" appended to it?
| They're still continuing worldwide operations.
| bdcravens wrote:
| The original title is "Important Message For Bittrex U.S.
| Customers"
| sosuke wrote:
| Yes please. I wasn't surprised they were closing the US access
| but I was absolutely floored to think they were closing
| everything.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Dexes destroyed the long-tail crypto exchange. Consolidation and
| shut downs are coming. Regulation is certainly an issue but the
| truth is Bittrex doesn't really need to exist anymore. Cross-
| chain swaps are possible with wrapped assets, atomic swaps, and
| operations like FixedFloat. End of an era but the market has
| spoken. Whatever benefits a centralized exchange provides are
| better with deeper liquidity and larger exchanges like Coinbase
| and Binance.
|
| I also believe Gemini is on its last legs. The SEC combined with
| anemic volumes, GUSD went nowhere, Nifty Gateway market
| collapsed, Gemini Earn is in bankruptcy. Winklevoss will just buy
| and hold BTC from now on.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Coinbase and Binance are firmly under the microscope of the US
| Department of Justice (DOJ)
| yieldcrv wrote:
| End of a crappy era, in the US
|
| The extortion racket bucket shops cant go fast enough!
|
| Long live DEX's, liquidity pool technology has been an
| incredible boon to the crypto space, shifting dynamics away
| from exchanges directly to the project issuers and community.
| gear54rus wrote:
| yeah except now you will exchange your fiat into crypto with
| some shady guy instead of a somewhat-trustable big entity
| with reputation.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| there are, and will be, other fiat onramps
|
| Even Paypal and Cashapp are trusted crypto exchanges now.
| The crypto you receive there can be withdrawn and access
| the entire crypto economy.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| The code is open source, your only risks are bugs, exploits
| and the government.
| skee8383 wrote:
| Without any fiat on-ramp crypto is worthless. its value
| is always measured by how much fiat it can be sold for.
| without that it has no value. what are you gonna do, go
| mail a stranger cash for coins? send him gold bars for
| coins? lol. this crap is OVER. please wake up! or dont, i
| don't really care..
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Glad we agree the IRS shouldn't be taxing something that
| has no value.
| pawelduda wrote:
| Bugs, exploits, and "only problems" in the same sentence
| are what makes it funny, especially when your money is on
| the line and the most popular smart contract lang is
| JavaScript for blockchain edition
|
| I mean it certainly does the job but I'd die from stress
| if I would risk releasing a bug that could wipe hundreds
| of millions of users' money. I respect people who are
| good enough at Solidity to be reasonably confident.
| Atlas22 wrote:
| By shady guy, the commenter is likey referring to peer-
| to-peer marketplace swapping of fiat and crypto, not
| DEXes. DEXes cannot offer fiat currencies since it is
| inherently centralized. AFAIK, the only options to
| exchange fiat are centralized exchanges and peer-to-peer
| marketplaces, both of which rely on extensive trust in a
| very small number of people, and are not open-source or
| publicly-auditable.
| detrites wrote:
| *in the US
|
| Bittrex Global continues, along with the other 600+ centralised
| exchanges [0] unfortunately excluded in American-centric
| reality.
|
| [0] https://blockspot.io/exchange/
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Too bad DEXs can't actually get money into the ecosystem,
| they're only about swapping one funny token for another.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Buy USDC on Coinbase, withdraw to personal wallet, now you
| can use on dex. Or that's what I do. I pay all my taxes and I
| pay a lot of them.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| This works but it's also specifically not using the dex
| (decentralized exchange, for anyone confused) to exchange
| fiat / crypto in either direction. Coinbase is doing that.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Yes but the benefits of dexes, specifically the ability
| to earn fees by being a liquidity provider (LP) in an
| automatic market maker pool (AMM) are very useful. You
| can maintain your exposure to assets and not need to
| maintain a trading bot with all of its risks and still
| earn fees.
| saurik wrote:
| But that relegates the centralized exchange into the
| position of being nothing more than a "fiat on-ramp", and
| potentially literally nothing more than a trivial wrapper
| around Circle (in the case of Coinbase and USDC), which
| effectively undermines their business model of operating
| the whole exchange apparatus. (Hell: does Coinbase even
| make any money at all if you deposit USD and withdraw
| USDC? I think they don't have deposit fees in general, do
| the USD<>USDC 1:1, and then offer free withdrawals on
| USDC due to some fancy new "gasless" withdrawal mechanism
| Circle came up with.)
|
| Regardless, the point being made in the comment upthread
| wasn't "you will never need a centralized entity ever
| again": that was a total strawman. It wasn't even that
| you wouldn't want _any_ centralized exchanges! It was
| merely that the "long tail" of random exchanges who
| specialize in listing more random tokens is effectively
| dead as who would bother with all that trouble to
| navigate all the red tape--particularly to operate in the
| United States--to support and vet these tokens when every
| token ever can be made available on a decentralized
| exchange. You might thereby still want a handful of the
| largest exchanges... but do you really need Bittrex
| enough for them to make enough money to put much effort
| into existing?
| quanticle wrote:
| But that relegates the centralized exchange into the
| position of being nothing more than a "fiat on-ramp"
|
| That's actually a pretty profitable business. "If you
| want to interact in any way with crypto, you either have
| to go through Coinbase or some shady black market crypto
| dealer," is actually great news for Coinbase.
| saurik wrote:
| I mean, you cut off the rest of that paragraph ;P. Sure:
| it sounds like maybe a reasonable opportunity for
| _Circle_ , but Coinbase would effectively be adding no
| value anymore and would have to attempt to charge ( _a
| lot_ , if they wanted to have any hope of making anywhere
| near as much money as their current business model) for
| something that not only are they currently doing for free
| but which they aren't really doing in the first place (as
| they are just a thin wrapper around Circle). The only
| reason Circle isn't bothering with this market is
| seemingly that they didn't want to deal directly with
| retail and they don't really have to because Coinbase was
| willing to integrate it for free... but like, Paxos
| (which is also regulated) does deal with individual
| users, so there is no reason Circle _can 't_ in a world
| where Coinbase is otherwise irrelevant. (The reality,
| though, is that there is still benefit for traders to
| having centralized exchanges due to their limit order
| book model, so I wouldn't discount Coinbase just yet,
| anyway ;P.)
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > does Coinbase even make any money at all if you deposit
| USD and withdraw USDC?
|
| They have 75% of $33 billions (with a 'b') of the USDC
| circulating as short-term US treasuries (with every
| single individual ID of the short-term treasuries
| publicly posted).
|
| So someone is basically printing free money by having
| about $25 bn in short term US treasuries yielding atm
| something insane like 4% yearly.
|
| I don't know who's pocketing that money but that's about
| $1 billion, yearly, in yields from the short term US
| treasuries.
|
| If somehow Coinbase (or "Centre" but Centre is Circle +
| Coinbase) is pocketing that money, they probably could
| allow 0% fees trading everywhere and still be one of the
| most profitable HN unicorn out there.
|
| Does Coinbase give APY on people keeping USDC at
| Coinbase? I have no idea. Does Coinbase give APY on
| people withdrawing USDC to private wallets? I think they
| don't. I'm nearly sure they don't.
|
| What happens to that money?
|
| I've never seen anything posted on the subject.
| latchkey wrote:
| This is what my friend was doing, until CB just locked his
| account after making two $10k USDC purchases. He was fully
| KYC'd. No warning or reason given, just "convert back to
| USD and withdraw your money please, that's our final
| answer".
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| I guess the issue I foresee is that many perp DEXes aren't
| available in the USA. Gemini is opening a perp CEX soon I
| think. May be the last bastion for smaller CEXes: having enough
| regulatory favorability/connections to copy DeFi until the
| music stops.
| saurik wrote:
| A DEX wouldn't fundamentally exist in any specific regulatory
| environment... how would one somehow not be available in the
| US?
| quanticle wrote:
| It would be unavailable in the sense that US entities would
| be legally prohibited from transacting with it, in the same
| way that US entities are prohibited from transacting with
| Binance (and, to the extent that they're flouting this
| prohibition, they're getting in trouble for it).
| babyshake wrote:
| Would you expect they will rug pull GUSD? I assume this, like
| with USDC, would be seriously illegal, but it also wouldn't
| surprise me if they had some ToS provisions somewhere waiving
| their obligation to redeem GUSD for USD.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| This is a stupid title though. It's just Bittrex US. I can't
| think of a worse country to do crypto business in so it should
| come as no surprise. Bittrex Global seems perfectly fine.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Yes, the original title is "Important Message For Bittrex U.S.
| Customers"
| rchaud wrote:
| What are the good countries? In crypto, most business seems to
| come down to converting an unstable fiat currency into a stable
| fiat one. DeFi is just the middleman.
| quanticle wrote:
| The problem is that the countries that are good for crypto,
| e.g. Venezuela, Nicaragua, Lebanon, etc, aren't really all
| that good for _anything else_.
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