[HN Gopher] Binance and CEO admit financial crimes, billions cou...
___________________________________________________________________
Binance and CEO admit financial crimes, billions coughed up to US
govt
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 140 points
Date : 2023-11-23 14:46 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| I've been saying this from day 1, and here it goes again: 99% of
| the people involved in crypto is a scumbag. And every day that
| goes by evidence accumulates in my favor.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| finally, i can be in the 1%
| jandrese wrote:
| In practice there are only a handful of reasons people actually
| get into crypto: 1. Speculation 2.
| Purchasing illicit items/services 3. Payment for ransom
| 4. Money laundering 5. Tax evasion 6. Ideological
|
| All of the other reasons barely register. One thing you may
| note about the list is how many are crimes or are crime
| adjacent. Even the honest speculators are living in a world
| that promises unreasonably high returns funded by the criminal
| activities of the rest of the items. You're probably saying
| "but ideological reasons doesn't necessary mean crimes", but
| when you ask them what those ideological reasons are they
| pretty much always boil down to not paying taxes or evading law
| enforcement for reasons they don't want to explicitly state.
| deebosong wrote:
| To elaborate further on the ideological angle:
|
| I've seen folks mention that it's about "the future" in a
| hand-wavy, abstract, nebulous sense. But their actions
| demonstrate profiteering, opportunism, and the greater-fool
| theory in action. Basically, for me, it seemed like all the
| ideology was intellectual cover (aka rationalizing) for plain
| ole greed, so they don't have to admit to themselves and
| others that it has nothing to do with the betterment of
| humanity and the future, and they just want to get rich
| quickly. To call it greed would be somewhat unbecoming, and
| the ideological arguments sounded good enough to assuage any
| psychological conflicts in oneself.
|
| Might not be a generous interpretation, but if the ideology
| were indeed at the core of it, I feel like other areas of
| their lives would reflect said ideologies.
|
| For the record, greed was at the core of my own interest in
| crypto when I was looking into it, so I could be projecting.
| Or it could be that said people and myself both experienced
| this as the driving force behind our interest in crypto as
| laymen.
| latchkey wrote:
| One of my favorite responses to this...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410
| orbit7 wrote:
| I think there is a strong technological interest in crypto,
| Bitcoin kicked off a triple-entry bookkeeping system so there
| is a new tech interest and ability to make money in a new
| financial space, many good communities have arisen out of
| that.
|
| There is many tech communities buzzing with blockchain
| related tech and some serious innovation, a lot of
| interesting new projects from lower cost faster international
| transactions through to distributed GPU rendering, identity
| systems, and the possibilities with NFT's have barely got
| started.
|
| It's also a new asset class for investors with ETF's from
| BlackRock etc round the corner its evident it's a now a
| rapidly maturing space, what's happened with Binance is
| evident that regulation is starting to catch up, but its
| regulation being so slow and indecisive that has made it easy
| pickings for illegal activity to occur.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think that there are a lot of legitimate reasons to
| _work_ on developing new distributed ledger tech. There are
| interesting potential use cases. However, I do think that
| pessimistic list applies to most people who are _currently
| investing a substantial amount of their wealth into
| crypto_. Whatever the potential for the technology, most of
| the current use isn 't great.
| solomonb wrote:
| I think you are largely correct but I don't think it was
| always this way.
|
| When I first heard about Bitcoin the price had just hit $5
| and everyone was either a hardcore libertarian or they
| thought the idea of a digital currency was very scifi and
| exciting. I fell into the latter camp and became increasingly
| disinterested as the years progressed despite making really
| good money off a brief mining stint.
| npoc wrote:
| Learn about Gresham's law, and the reasons gold became
| valuable (clue: it's not because it's shiny)
| artursapek wrote:
| This is so cynical it's hilarious. Why is ideological
| mentioned last? Most people I know who are into crypto (and I
| know a lot) are into it because they believe in economically
| sound, censorship resistant currency.
| sputknick wrote:
| I'll take the other side of this argument and point out: it
| probably took decades if not centuries to start using paper
| currency. Will crypto fail? Maybe. But to say that people
| building an alternate currency to the one we currently have are
| "scumbag" is a bit much. They are building a financial system
| that we might one day decide is better than what we currently
| have available to us. Sure, some are opportunistic bad-actors,
| but 99%? I don't think thats fair.
| jgilias wrote:
| Imagine how scammed the first people who had to accept paper
| instead of gold felt.
| gumballindie wrote:
| And each one of them is moving over into ai.
| jMyles wrote:
| I'm confident that I personally know more than 1% of the
| engineers who contribute to production crypto codebases, and I
| have to say, I've not met the cohort you describe.
|
| Every ethereum event is filled with the most tolerant,
| peaceful, healthy, hopeful, lovely, hard-working people.
|
| I love playing these events, because the crowds are always so
| warm and enthusiastic and so apt so break into sing-along. :-)
|
| Where are all these scumbags?
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| Right back atcha pal. Crypto trades full transparency for full
| autonomy. It's hell for authoritarian regimes and corrupt
| middlemen both. 99% of people against crypto benefit from one
| of those two.
| pavlov wrote:
| The magnitude of the crimes that Binance has enabled is being
| insufficiently reported, IMO.
|
| Bloomberg at least bothered to get the details:
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-22/binance-l...
|
| Binance admitted that they enabled funds to be sent to Hamas,
| ISIS and Al-Qaeda, in addition to Russian-occupied Ukrainian
| territories, Russian darknets, tens of millions of dollars in
| ransomware, North Korean hackers, and more than 1,000 child porn
| transactions.
|
| The most heinous crimes and atrocities in today's world are being
| funded with cryptocurrency.
|
| At this point, somebody will jump in with: "So what, cash dollars
| are being used by Hamas too!" -- yes, of course. But moving a
| million dollars in physical cash is much harder. Crypto companies
| like Binance have built their entire business models around
| evading the systems that exist to prevent money laundering and
| terrorist funding. And the criminals have certainly been paying
| attention. The entire crypto ecosystem is severely tainted by
| this association.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| This doesn't stop with kicking Binance out of the US, though,
| right? It's a step in the right direction for making it harder
| for criminals to access US dollars, but the liquidity of moving
| crypto around is still there and the ability to cash out into
| other fiat currencies is still present.
|
| I have no idea how difficult it is to turn varying fiat
| currencies into dollars, though. Presumably challenging when
| dealing with large sums and trivial with small sums?
| setgree wrote:
| The key question for me now is: once you subtract all the
| plainly unethical transfers, securities-laws-runarounds, pump
| and dumps, and wash trading, how much of a business is left?
| Secondarily, is that 'total remaining market cap' larger or
| smaller than the total value of VC funding in the ecosystem?
| seydor wrote:
| Binance had 4.17 trillion trading volume in the past 7 days
| cowpig wrote:
| I could generate $4.17 trillion in trading volume with
| myself if the cost of a transaction is updating a row in a
| database. This statistic doesn't mean anything in isolation
| dymk wrote:
| Well, to everybody else, trading volume means between
| different entities, so your loophole probably isn't all
| that relevant
| Detrytus wrote:
| What if you own both entities? And you also own an
| exchange where the trading happens, so you give them both
| special Black Friday deal: 0 transaction cost for the
| next 12 months.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I don't really mess with crypto anymore, but back when I
| did, literally every transaction I ever made was with
| myself. I literally never spent any on a good or service.
| artursapek wrote:
| What you're describing is called wash trading.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Which was 99.9% of the NFT market. I wonder how much of
| it is the crypto market. Probably not much lower.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| I read that exchanges inflate these numbers in different
| ways, so it can be very misleading.
|
| Apparently sometimes this goes very wrong [0].
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36610006
| killingtime74 wrote:
| If you and me traded 1 dollar between us 4.17 trillion
| times (all electronic, we could probably do more), we would
| have the same trading volume.
| jahnu wrote:
| And what part of the economy did that facilitate?
| evdubs wrote:
| The SEC lawsuit, which alleges (among other things) Binance
| as having lots of wash trading on their platform, still
| hasn't been resolved.
|
| Using statistical methods, for BTC, ETH, LTC, and XRP,
| Binance wash trading was estimated at >50%.
|
| https://www.nber.org/papers/w30783
|
| You can see other pairs on Binance that are clearly more.
| For example, GAS is the 9th "most traded" token on Binance.
| It claims ~$100M in daily volume, but there's not even $1M
| in liquidity between +/- 2% of spot. That is almost
| certainly all wash trading.
|
| https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/binance
|
| Binance volume numbers are not believable.
| infecto wrote:
| Trading volume should not be confused with real
| transactions.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > ... once you subtract all the plainly unethical transfers,
| securities-laws-runarounds, pump and dumps, and wash trading,
| how much of a business is left?
|
| Coinbase, a HN unicorn, probably knows? Their KYC/AML is top
| notch (which is a PITA for honest people btw). They know how
| many USD actually entered and whom send them. They _may_ have
| had insiders accused of pump and dumping but AFAIK Coinbase
| hasn 't been accused of pump and dump.
|
| Coinbase has now been chosen by BlackRock to keep the Bitcoin
| backing the BlackRock ETF in custody: I take it if Bitcoin
| ETFs are accepted, and if BlackRock and Amundi and I don't
| now who else start launching Bitcoin ETF, we may begin to see
| what's left?
|
| Someone else who may know: that weird dude who is behind
| MSTR: he basically bought 158 000 Bitcoins at an average
| price of $29 K USD and he plans to buy much more. (if you
| want to long or short Bitcoin, you can do so on the MSTR
| stock for it basically follows the ups and downs of Bitcoin).
|
| What's left, for all we know, could be much more than what's
| already in (I've got no crystall ball though).
|
| The one thing that I'm sure of is that it's not _all_
| fraudulent.
|
| For example an estimated 25% of all people in argentina have
| cryptocurrencies: I doubt one person out of every four there
| is a criminal!?
|
| Switzerland: if there's one country where its citizens really
| don't strike me as criminals it's Switzerland. 20%+ people
| owning cryptocurrencies there.
|
| I can understand the "there are no use cases besides
| speculation" argument.
|
| But I cannot understand the "all the people using
| cryptocurrencies are criminal" one.
|
| When you've got several countries in the world where at least
| one out of every five person did at least try
| cryptocurrencies, there _is_ something.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| _Everyone_ has been paying attention: the world of capital
| controls has been gone for 10 years and we let public figures
| play with themselves proclaiming the opposite. While they
| already knew that transaction whitelisting was a waste of
| taxpayer dollars and an impossible waste of private sector
| resources to do.
|
| What you're actually seeing is that _everyone_ is using crypto
| as a public utility. Everyone as in all types of parties.
|
| Crypto exchanges are not actually capable of pretending to play
| this game. Third party software has been created to attempt to
| flag transactions with an obvious sanctioned source, but the
| user unlinking that source is very easy. Binance reduced
| friction so much that users didn't bother doing that apparently
| either. Binance's aspirations grew so big that they couldnt be
| just a website and server not incorporated anywhere. But
| basically every other centralized custodial exchange is the
| same.
|
| It is simply not possible to play along with the state's
| deprecated path of policing transactions. The most compliant
| exchanges will simply automate mountains of paperwork to
| FinCEN, the suspicious activity reports that the GAO points out
| are not read at all. Binance is in trouble for simply not doing
| that because the government doesnt really have a tool to police
| this either.
|
| Many people have made this observation. Many people that made
| this observation are 10 years older now, have seen their own
| state fall apart and provided a convenience to the governance
| organization and people in that area. That's how crypto
| propagates. The concept just waits until the human discovers a
| friction, and then flips them and all the nearest humans like
| nodes in a graph.
|
| This understanding increases confidence in crypto from people
| that matter more than the pearl clutching people worried about
| "but criminals!" that don't matter, as it is predictable how
| more capital enters crypto from all sources around the world
| over time.
|
| Its all quite relative, are we supposed to care that a Chinese
| citizen circumvented China's capital control using crypto. Is a
| Chinese citizen supposed to care that someone on the US OFAC
| list can access international finance? in each country's sphere
| both are "criminals", but are they? Don't we value the freedom
| of the Chinese person escaping oppressive capital controls of
| their administration? Crypto supersedes this concept and
| debate, deprecating the need to debate it at all, capital
| flows.
|
| These kind of court cases are instruction manuals to everyone
| that was on the fence. People that didn't have an example of
| anyone using crypto for goods and services or converting it to
| local currency now do. All they see is the exchange getting in
| trouble, nothing changing, and everyone _including people on
| the OFAC list_ not getting in trouble or their assets frozen.
| More nodes flipped.
| lolbert4 wrote:
| lol no
| hirako2000 wrote:
| + the SEC pretty much acting like a mob engaging in grand
| scale extorsion. The claim and demand for its chairman to
| step down was recently made by a congressman, not some crypto
| fanatic.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| the aggregate direction definitely is not the state trying
| to stop crypto commerce
|
| so love to see Congress trying to excise these unproductive
| elements of the government out while harmonizing business
| practices
| costco wrote:
| Any ideas why Binance didn't file a single SAR? Especially
| because they were hiring all these compliance people, ex
| prosecutors, ex FBI agents, etc so surely it would've come
| up. I'm surprised they didn't just game the system and file a
| bunch of useless ones.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| why? they operate in many countries and the US wanted
| special treatment and to be paid attention to. its a hubris
| that is ingrained in US culture that isn't prioritized by
| people that dont think about it.
|
| they tried to firewall off the US with the Binance.us
| entity but that wasnt good enough
|
| so now they see the best way to operate in the US without
| an impending problem is to kickback $4bn and sentencing the
| front man, this removes ongoing uncertainty in that market
| and _improved_ access to all that capital
|
| many other countries have random paperwork nuances too,
| they just matter even less
|
| binance tried to stack the deck with connected people, but
| it wasnt taking advice from them, they were just there and
| isolated with fat paychecks and BNB token grants. I think
| they just didnt think about SARs. They werent worried about
| self incrimination, they just didnt do it
| achow wrote:
| https://archive.is/YvkhM
| wizardforhire wrote:
| ^this.
|
| What good are sanctions if you can easily get around them?
|
| Why are there sanctions? What's the objective of sanctions? ...
| What happens if sanctions fail? Whats the worst thing to
| happen? ...
| baybal2 wrote:
| > At this point, somebody will jump in with
|
| At this point you need to jump up and point to:
|
| 1. Ordinary banks are not sued for absolutely the same thing,
| which probably occurs to much bigger extent in major banks
| which pass many times more transactions than Binance
|
| 2. Forget about Russian darknets, _Russian mafia lives in
| London, and New York in the open_ to complete disregard of the
| same financial regulators.
|
| 3. It's practically impossible to catch people who can fake, or
| buy a passport to do small scale money laundering, but forget
| about the small fish.
|
| BILLIONS of Russian money gets laundered through biggest US
| banks every day completely legally, through schemes known to
| all big banks, and financial regulators for decades.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Ordinary banks are not sued for absolutely the same thing,
| which probably occurs to much bigger extent in major banks
| which pass many times more transactions than Binance
|
| No? https://www.investopedia.com/stock-
| analysis/2013/investing-n...
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/jpmorgan-chase-co-agrees-
| pay-...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-
| mexico...
| seydor wrote:
| > moving a million dollars in physical cash
|
| who says it's physical?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The big question is if these things would be possible without
| crypto existing. History suggests they are, so I'm not sure if
| crypto really makes anything possible on that front that wasn't
| before. Some of the largest terrorist attacks and most
| entrenched armed resistance movements took place pre crypto. I
| don't think access to cryptocurrency would have made the
| vietcong significantly more effective for example.
| infecto wrote:
| No, the big question is what the overall percentage of dollar
| volume is being used for these crimes. Comparing to history
| is silly.
|
| I would also assume that cryptocurrency makes moving money
| for crimes vastly easier. And I would also suspect a large
| amount of volume of transactions are illegal or gray in
| nature.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's not about a binary _possibility_ of yes /no, it's about
| _ease and frequency_.
|
| Crypto can mean an attack can be funded with 50x more money
| than had been possible previously, or 20 organizations can be
| funded where previously only 2 could have worked out the
| logistics.
|
| Trying to frame this as a binary possible/impossible is the
| wrong lens.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I'll jump in with so what, banks are doing it too.
| https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-n...
|
| Moving a million dollars by wiring it from your HSBC account is
| actually much easier than doing it with crypto.
|
| edit: and in the HSBC case the CEO didn't even lose his job!
| infecto wrote:
| Much easier, maybe? But also much easier to track. And at
| least to some larger degree banks follow KYC.
| bordercases wrote:
| > But also much easier to track
|
| Why is this true?
| infecto wrote:
| Banks in the US must follow kyc and other forms of
| reporting.
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| *Much easier to stop, much harder to track. A bank doesn't
| have a publicly auditable ledger the way crypto does, it
| can only be traced with the assent of the bank and their
| policies vary.
|
| The distinction matters.
| infecto wrote:
| Yes because we see so much value from a public auditable
| log. It's much easier to send crypto to a mixer and
| conceal origin/destination and much easier for the
| average Joe to do it.
| omarfarooq wrote:
| The very origin of funds being from a mixer taints it.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| I think these groups would be doing it with banks (like they
| did before?) instead of crypto if banks were much easier.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| You imply they migrated to use crypto and stopped using
| traditional banking. No evidence that it is the case.
|
| Some criminals may have easier access to crypto facilities
| than banks hence activity, or cost is lower that way for
| the initiated, yes. It doesn't mean volumes of teinted
| activities is anywhere as big via crypto than it is via
| fiat.
|
| Common sense could take a guess, but there can't be much
| certainty as illegal activities happen aren't made in plain
| sight in either route.
| jMyles wrote:
| > The entire crypto ecosystem is severely tainted by this
| association.
|
| I don't understand the impetus to view it as a taint.
|
| The fact that crypto can be used for things that the state
| wishes to prohibit is strong evidence that it is effective and
| politically neutral - and those are exactly the features it is
| striving for.
|
| The desire to stamp out war and terrorism and violence is
| laudable, and I certainly agree on the importance of decreasing
| the influence of the groups you suggest. But attempting this by
| creating a complex, closed-source, global, locked down monetary
| and economic system has collateral damage - in the form of easy
| money available for imperial ambition - that is worse than the
| problem it is purporting to solve.
|
| Surely if we all believe in the basic decency of people, and of
| our universal desire for peace and understanding, we can
| deprecate institutions of terror by means other than handing
| over limitless economic power to the state?
| ttul wrote:
| In a democracy, those limitless powers are limited by voters.
| The government can only pass laws and implement regulations
| that are acceptable to a democratic public. To the extent
| that voters want to move their money freely around the world,
| they also want policies that prevent the transfer of money to
| terrorists or child molesters. These powers are not limitless
| at all. They are limited through democracy.
|
| Crypto is therefore a way to work around the wishes of the
| majority of others. That's anti-democratic. It's not freedom
| so much as it is tyranny.
| rubyfan wrote:
| This is the best argument I've heard to date for regulation
| in a democracy.
| mattrighetti wrote:
| Everything that involves privacy could potentially go
| around the _wishes of the majority_ , yet everyone has the
| right to it (so they say) which is guaranteed by democratic
| laws nowadays.
|
| We all know, for example, that terrorist groups plan their
| attacks on platforms that use e2e encryption, are you
| suggesting to end privacy for all to be able to catch a
| bunch of terrorists? Because there is no gray area in all
| of this, you either have it or you don't.
| jMyles wrote:
| So it all boils down to the sole franchise of the vote as
| the only way to bring societal change.
|
| That's not something that the information age is going to
| afford, and I thought that - pause by threads like this
| notwithstanding - the foundations of hacking and cyperspace
| independence were meant as a surface on which to build
| something better.
|
| I don't think that the world's poor and disenfranchised can
| afford to wait around for generation after generation while
| we try to figure out how to inspire change in international
| finance by using only the debilitated and purely symbolic
| tactic of voting.
|
| > In a democracy, those limitless powers are limited by
| voters
|
| I just want to point out that, empirically speaking - if
| you hold the US and Europe states to be democratic
| institutions - this is observably false. Voting has not
| achieved limitations unto halting empire, predation, and
| extraction.
| dakial1 wrote:
| I always wondered why the US didn't crack harder on these
| exchanges (and crypto in general) and my conclusion is that the
| government has a second agenda for these.
|
| Either because they can trace the money path more easily (than
| physical money) or that they are using it for their own covert
| ops.
| anonporridge wrote:
| That's why the US Naval Research Lab made Tor open source.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| The only problem is the right hands aren't getting paid off.
|
| The Reinsurance Industry doesn't work in Lloyds, Macau,
| basically a PO Box in the Caribbean because they're moving
| millions and billions of dollars FOR CHARITY.
| 0ckpuppet wrote:
| So Binance didn't commit the crimes? The were just a conduit
| for funds between criminals? Kind of like the bank branches in
| Miami FLA that used to bank for drug dealers?
| thriftwy wrote:
| > Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories
|
| Regular Russian credit and debit cards++ now work there, thanks
| to the magic of NSPK. I don't think Crypto had any significant
| market share there.
|
| ++ Including the ones which were previously branded MasterCard
| and Visa, these no longer work internationally obviously, but
| domestically they didn't skip a beat thanks to aforementioned
| NSPK
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > The most heinous crimes and atrocities in today's world are
| being funded with cryptocurrency.
|
| Just for kicks: according to several sources (IMF, CIA world
| factbook, UN, ...), the percentage of the _world_ 's GDP tied
| to criminal activities is 2% to 5%.
|
| 2% to 5% of the entire world's GDP. We're in a $100 trillion+
| world GDP.
|
| So 2 to 5 _trillion_ USD are tied to criminal activities.
|
| The most heinous crimes and atrocities in today's world are,
| sadly, not very different from the most heinous crimes and
| atrocities from 15 years ago.
|
| And 15 years ago they had _nothing_ to do with
| cryptocurrencies.
|
| There's no way to launder 2 to 5 trillion using
| cryptocurrencies. These amount are just way too big.
|
| > But moving a million dollars in physical cash is much harder.
|
| A million? Criminals have to move 2 to 5 _trillion_ USD yearly.
| Cryptocurrencies are insignificant and helpless here: the
| amounts are way too big.
|
| Moreover most cryptocurrencies uses aren't fraudulent (you have
| to be dumb to leave tracks in Bitcoin or Ethereum public
| ledgers, as shown by TFA once again) and most crimes do not
| involve cryptocurrencies.
|
| What about priorities? As in: going after the actual crimes
| instead of a totally insignificant source of funding of said
| criminals?
|
| 2 to 5 trillions, yearly, tied to criminal activities. Ponder
| _that_.
| eastbound wrote:
| If 90% of those trillions go through cryptocurrency
| platforms, wildly justifies closing them down. Or at least
| implement drastic Know-Your-Customer rules. But at the same
| time, if those platforms are also only used by people who
| bypass taxes, then there is no legit usage left for those
| platforms. Might as well leave them open and investigate each
| customer.
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| 90% of those trillions go through a combination of cash,
| Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan Chase.
| pavlov wrote:
| A lot of crime is obviously very local. The 2-5% of GDP
| number is irrelevant in this context.
|
| _> "What about priorities?"_
|
| Yeah, whataboutism is the primary line of defense for crypto.
|
| It's possible to do multiple things at once. If we shut down
| this environmental disaster of a virtual casino that's used
| primarily by the criminals, it won't take away anything from
| all the other efforts to fight crime.
| orwin wrote:
| > But moving a million dollars in physical cash is much harder.
|
| I mean, Tzahal moved 40 millions a month from Qatar directly to
| Hamas-controlled checkpoints for years, so i guess it depends.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Similar story:
|
| Cash App
|
| https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/
| oldjim69 wrote:
| Ban crypto. Wrap the whole thing up globally. It was a bad idea
| allowed to run on for too long. Time to stop the music.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Luckily you can't outlaw math!
| quenix wrote:
| Yeah but you can outlaw specific uses of it. Not saying I
| agree with it but crypto can definitely be made illegal.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Getting rid of exchanges would absolutely destroy the value
| of crypto.
| latchkey wrote:
| Exchanges and lending/borrowing markets have already
| moved to be decentralized.
|
| I think what you're thinking is the ability to convert
| fiat to crypto. If you got rid of that, it would just
| move more underground and into the black money markets.
| latchkey wrote:
| Should we also ban private communication too?
|
| To be clear, we don't get to choose which parts of math we
| ban and which parts we don't.
| phowat wrote:
| We most certainly do get to choose if we want to. Why not
| ?
| latchkey wrote:
| Because it doesn't work out like you think it would.
| Those of us who have been on the internet a long time
| remember pre-1999 days.
|
| Banning or preventing people from using math only
| empowers other countries that develop it on their own.
|
| https://www.csis.org/analysis/end-export-controls
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| I'm sure the anti-crypto crowd would like nothing better.
| Patrol8394 wrote:
| Yes, but in majority of cases you still need some legal
| entity that can convert crypto to fiat so you can actually
| buy stuff with real money. Would be enough to forbid that and
| crypto is pretty much done.
| npoc wrote:
| You called fiat "real money"? That's where you're wrong.
| burnte wrote:
| You're right, it's ALL fiat money. All money that has
| ever existed was fiat money, from shells and dollars to
| bitcoins and xbox points. IF it doesn't have INHERENT
| value as food, fuel, etc, then it's a fiat currency, it
| has value because we declare it to be so. Cryptocoins are
| the ultimate fiat because they don't even really exist.
| phoe-krk wrote:
| You can outlaw exchanging math for dollars, though.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| i've read countless things you've commented, usually our
| interests diverge, but this one made me silently think
| "exactly!". well done!
| mrkramer wrote:
| Crypto turned exactly opposite of what Satoshi wanted....he or
| they wanted transparent, mathematically (cryptographically)
| proven, decentralized open ledger transactions, not this sh*t
| show of fraud and anarchy.
| jgilias wrote:
| How do you know what Satoshi wanted? For all we know Satoshi
| might be Paul Le Roux making a way to move value for his
| 'business endeavors'
| mrkramer wrote:
| Just read white paper....Satoshi was legit; Satoshi was
| most probably an academic and a business man (I would say
| gambling industry) who wanted to eliminate fraud and double
| spending in the digital world. No drugs, no this wild
| anarchy. He wanted decentralized digital cash, that's all.
| jgilias wrote:
| And that's exactly what Bitcoin is. I don't think someone
| with his mental faculties would have been naive enough to
| not realize how it could and would be used.
| scottLobster wrote:
| You been following OpenAI drama? Details are still coming
| out, but so far it sounds like the textbook case for very
| smart but naive idealists not having a clue as to how
| people or power work.
|
| For example, Ilya Sutskever was apparently at the helm of
| the now-aborted coup. Look at any picture of him. The guy
| fancies himself a leader of a corporate coup but lacks
| the social awareness to shave the ugly scraggly remains
| of hair off the front of his balding head. Nothing wrong
| with being bald, but you can at least tidy up your
| hairline and not be intentionally ugly. Appearances
| matter, particularly in a public-facing leadership role.
| Even SBF was smart enough to turn his dishevelment into
| part of his marketing. Ilya lacks the personality to pull
| such a thing off, and strikes me as the kind of guy who
| just doesn't expect to be judged for his appearance, and
| if someone did he would probably make some moral
| statement about judging books by their cover. He would be
| technically correct and completely ineffective, just like
| his coup attempt.
| milutinovici wrote:
| No it isn't. Cryptocurrencies are not currencies at all,
| because they are all deflationary. More fitting name
| would be crypto assets.
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| What, and trust the people who have been doing QE for half my
| life with the soundness of my medium of exchange? The same
| people who froze the bank accounts of peaceful protestors in my
| capitol city last year?
|
| I'll abandon crypto when it becomes the second-best alternative
| to a state-controlled money supply. The shenanigans of the
| Davos crowd are becoming too weird to do otherwise.
| ttul wrote:
| I recall having a conversation in about 2016 with a lawyer who
| was looking into crypto for potential opportunities. After a
| thorough analysis, he said, "In a few years, all these people
| will be in jail."
|
| He was right.
| capableweb wrote:
| Except it's 2023, and almost no people who've dealt with
| cryptocurrency is in jail. A few notable exceptions exists,
| but you don't exactly go to jail for sending 0.1 Bitcoin
| around.
| thriftwy wrote:
| > globally
|
| There is no longer such thing in 2023.
|
| Try to do anything "globally" and get ridiculed out by China
| and Russia. Rest of the team being AFK.
|
| That's especially significant in light of pretending there's a
| "global" climate change fight going on.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Lots of opinions over here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38366729
| fredgrott wrote:
| Note what has not really got attention yet, except in a Jason
| Calacanis podcast. Several VC firms in one specific US state were
| passing around instructions on how to do pump and dump schemes on
| these exchanges...the exchange mention was FTX.
|
| This is the tip of what is coming as far as US govt
| investigations and court cases. Investor wise what are the
| compliant safe exchanges? Anyone? Exactly, no one has any idea as
| of yet and that should scare all of us who want to use crypto.
| timetraveller26 wrote:
| Is this good for Bitcoin? /s
| mrkramer wrote:
| They already pleaded guilty? $4bn fine? and CEO will be let
| free?! At least Binance is not allowed to operate in US as far as
| I remember. I told years ago that DOJ is coming for them because
| they are unregistered bucket shop. And Binance thought US is
| gonna stop at FTX.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Is not they crypto is bad itself, but it creates incentive for
| people to be bad. Anonymous transfers? Issuing tokens like they
| are stock assets? Buy and sell the token to bid up prices and
| volume? These are clear and easy use cases.
| d--b wrote:
| No one's going to jail?
|
| Zhao's worth 10bn and is asked to pay 150m?
|
| Binance pays 10bn while it is still worth 36bn?
|
| I am shocked. This clearly sends the message that if you make
| money fast enough, you'll get away with anything...
| readyplayernull wrote:
| Just like the war on drugs it's all a huge legal drag net to
| grab the money from international investors.
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