[HN Gopher] Binance founder 'CZ' leaves prison on Friday
___________________________________________________________________
Binance founder 'CZ' leaves prison on Friday
Author : svenfaw
Score : 110 points
Date : 2024-09-27 14:41 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fortune.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fortune.com)
| hyggetrold wrote:
| "He got his bag"
| TyrianPurple wrote:
| 60 billion is a beautiful payday. That's now clean (hopeully),
| he can now start something else.
| Gys wrote:
| Crime pays?
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Meanwhile, SBF is settling right into prison gang life:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1av88z5/fir...
|
| No tats visible in the pic, tho.
| trollied wrote:
| It was being reported that he is now sharing a space with Sean
| "Diddy" Combs.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| There's a joke in there about which of the two screwed more
| people...
| pants2 wrote:
| That was from February. Can't seem to find anything more
| recent.
| lordfrito wrote:
| He's leveled up to expert level polycule
| startupsfail wrote:
| Bitcoins are clearly negative sum game (resources used, GPUs
| burned, CO2 emitted, money changed hands). Wish we could do less
| of it.
| jsheard wrote:
| At least the broader crypto ecosystem mostly moved over to
| proof-of-stake, even if Bitcoin will probably always be proof-
| of-work, so at least most of their Ponzi schemes aren't boiling
| the oceans in the process anymore. Small victories.
| pants2 wrote:
| Bitcoin _can 't_ always be proof-of-work. Given the capped
| supply, the mining rewards will eventually diminish to the
| point that the network is no longer secure. It will have to
| transition to proof-of-stake or some other mechanism long
| before that happens.
| tromp wrote:
| It intends to rely on fees, i.e. to have a constant backlog
| of high fee paying transactions. We'll see how that plays
| out within a few decades as the block subsidy becomes
| insignificant.
| pants2 wrote:
| Transaction volume goes up and down. Just look at ETH gas
| prices - varying between 1 and 1000 month-to-month. BTC
| holders aren't going to be OK with a temporary lull in
| transactions leading to a double-spend attack etc.
| tromp wrote:
| I agree it seems wildly optimistic.
| rvz wrote:
| We are still waiting for AI (Deep Learning) to do the same
| and move to efficient alternatives without incinerating the
| environment and consuming the oceans to cool their GPUs
| whilst training and doing inference on their AI models.
|
| So many years, yet no practical efficient solutions currently
| in production to reduce the emissions AI is producing. Much
| more urgent than crypto since that already has largely moved
| to proof-of-stake.
| earnesti wrote:
| Binance was not really about Bitcoin, it was more like a
| shitcoin casino and a money laundering machine.
| matrix2003 wrote:
| I'm just curious - if you were to try making a decentralized
| currency as a fun project, what mechanism would you use
| instead?
|
| I'm someone who doesn't really use it, but was fascinated with
| it before "blockchain" became a buzzword.
|
| edit: proof-of-work. I have been out of the loop for years :)
|
| My next question is are there downsides to proof-of-stake, and
| why has bitcoin not moved towards it?
| wmf wrote:
| https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2017/12/31/pos_faq.html
| _heimdall wrote:
| I've also been fascinated by bitcoin but never made the leap.
|
| The problem I always come back to is that it isn't a
| currency, a store of value, private, and I disagree with
| bitcoin's approach to decentralization. (A long list, I know.
| Every couple years I get the itch then rediscover all my
| complaints).
|
| Attempting to create a decentralized currency based on
| anything other than a supply-constrained natural resource is
| simply a losing game as far as I see it. The currency will be
| based only on promises, belief, and trust. A decentralized
| network is more akin to a Mexican standoff, trust and belief
| aren't what keep everyone from pulling the trigger.
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| but most national currencies have long since abandoned of
| the idea of being backed by physical resources, and have
| shifted towards promises, belief, and trust. are you saying
| that de-centralization introduces unique aspects that make
| physical backing a necessity?
| Yiin wrote:
| bluntly put you can pay taxes only in that currency and
| governments have power to enforce it, meanwhile btc has
| only as much power as currencies you can exchange it to.
| If you couldn't exchange btc to fiat, it would lose value
| rapidly.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Exactly. State currencies have their issues, but they do
| at least accept that a currency built only on faith and
| trust must be centralized.
|
| I am proposing that making a currency decentralized
| creates certain limitations. Without a central authority
| its extremely unlikely that a monetary system built on
| faith will last long. For bitcoin the claim is that the
| network is what you must have faith in, not a central
| authority. I don't find that compelling personally,
| mainly because I haven't found the protocol to be so
| bulletproof that I only need to trust it and can believe
| that the network will hold regardless of how many bad
| actors may attempt to corrupt it (not saying that is
| happening today, only that it is inevitable with time).
| acoard wrote:
| > My next question is are there downsides to proof-of-stake,
| and why has bitcoin not moved towards it?
|
| There are minor downsides in theory. Proof-of-stake is a bit
| less "democratic" and gives more voting share to those who
| have more money, vs. just are mining. In practice, proof-of-
| stake coins seem to be doing fine. The main one here is
| Ethereum.
|
| The main reason Bitcoin hasn't is due to inertia and the
| interest for miners (who do proof-of-work) to use their
| democratic power to keep bitcoin invested in proof-of-work.
| schlauerfox wrote:
| Proof-of-stake ruins it's security with a rich get richer
| endgame where the stakers concentrate until it's not
| distributed enough and one entity or group can collude and
| control the system and there's no way to exit that state.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Wouldn't any such holder want to avoid this condition
| developing as it would devalue the whole currency?
| keyringlight wrote:
| Wasn't there a few times when one of the large
| cryptocurriencies were almost under control of large mining
| pools where their combined computation would have gone over
| half? That seems like another "who has more money".
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| With Proof-of-Work, "rich get richer" is a side effect.
|
| With Proof-of-Stake, "rich get richer" is essentially
| coded into law.
| r00fus wrote:
| Why do we need a so-called decentralized currency anyway? I'd
| be less antagonistic if its major use case wasn't money
| laundering.
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| Just some examples:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_currency_controls_(
| 2...
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/316750/inflation-rate-
| in...
|
| https://hongkongfp.com/2023/12/15/hong-kong-govt-amends-
| nati...
|
| https://www.ibanet.org/article/5584f623-6456-4287-8c34-1907
| b...
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/20/americas/canada-
| trucker-p...
| alfredol wrote:
| In the case of Argentina, in most cases people have
| turned to the much safer USD.
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| Only when and where they've been allowed to.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| How are these solved by cryptocurrencies?
| ok123456 wrote:
| Capital controls are becoming more and more erratic and
| authoritarian. A decentralized currency provides a relief
| valve.
| pavlov wrote:
| More erratic and authoritarian compared to what time?
|
| As recently as 1989, most of the world's currencies were
| tightly controlled and exchange rates were fixed. In many
| countries like the Soviet Union, you were not even
| allowed to bring local cash outside of the country at
| risk of high penalties. Sending an international wire
| transfer was a multi-day operation that probably involved
| telex messages and several phone calls.
|
| Today you can send money instantly across the European
| continent in a single currency at essentially zero cost.
| The USA is also catching up and finally bringing their
| banks to the 21st century with Fedwire. Everybody has
| multiple credit cards and uses them for online shopping
| across the world. Any physical product you might imagine
| can be ordered from China with a one-click digital
| payment.
|
| None of these improvements were thanks to Bitcoin or any
| other cryptocurrency.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Bitcoin's advantage is mainly its name recognition and
| unchanging nature (== trust and protocol stability). You
| could never get the necessary support for any meaningful
| changes.
|
| For people who want proof-of-stake there are plenty of coins
| doing that. Etherium is probably the best known most
| established option.
|
| But no coin really solves the other big challenge of crypto-
| currency: barely anyone uses them as currency. Most of those
| that do do it for illegal purposes: ransomware payments,
| marketplaces for illegal goods and services (including the
| malware SaaS providers), illegal money movements etc. But for
| the vast majority of people it's more like digital gold than
| like digital cash: an investment vehicle that derives its
| value from its limited supply.
|
| As an investment it doesn't actually create economic value
| (unlike investing in real companies), so you need to have a
| pretty positive view of the other use cases to judge the
| overall impact as positive
| pishpash wrote:
| Whoever is using it as digital gold certainly sees economic
| value, e.g. preserving wealth to invest elsewhere.
| beloch wrote:
| Bitcoin's advantage is that it's value has continued
| climbing, aside from some fairly big blips, irrespective of
| its design or utility. That's why people buy it and hold
| it. It's a magic piggy bank.
|
| If a truly stable cryptocurrency was released that was
| actually suitable for everyday transactions at scale, the
| people who buy bitcoin would laugh at it for not offering a
| return on investment. It seems like such a currency will
| have to be adopted from the bottom up to succeed, not
| trickle from the top down.
|
| Here's a question for you: What happens to the value of
| bitcoin when some other crypto-currency starts doing the
| things bitcoin has only promised? Does it crash, or does
| the magic bubble around a completely useless technology
| persist for as long as people are willing to believe in it?
| modzu wrote:
| it's called monero
| wongarsu wrote:
| About a decade ago Dogecoin made a big push to get online
| and offline business to accept it. Making a block every
| minute was quite beneficial for that, and the price used
| to be somewhat stable. Today nobody pays in Dogecoin.
| Lots of companies that used to except
| Bitcoin/Litecoin/Dogecoin stopped doing so because off
| lack out demand.
|
| The issue isn't that crypto currencies can't be used as
| currency, it's more that they don't get used as currency
| outside niche use cases because they don't have a good
| USP. Most countries have decent enough currencies and
| payment systems
| n_ary wrote:
| I have actually used it to rent VPS, buy game keys(mostly
| steam), donate to some OSS devs who were promoting crypto
| currency, donated some to random friends(all of whom lost
| interest or their wallet secrets), converted to other
| currencies, lost my own wallet key etc.
|
| All these happened in very early days of bitcoin when one
| could mine using CPU and join a mining pool and others like
| litecoin were up and coming.
|
| But then, I lost interest as txn fees were eye watering and
| I was scammed several times by various steam key selling
| sites never completing my order and blocking me immediately
| if I complained. I realized that, this non-reversible form
| of currency was excellent for scam and fraud and I could
| not cry on the phone about these scams unlike how I can for
| my MasterCard/Visa/Amex.
|
| Now I come to think of it, if I held onto my bitcoins, I
| would be retiring wealthy, but alas, I was young and naive
| :')
| poincaredisk wrote:
| >But no coin really solves the other big challenge of
| crypto-currency: barely anyone uses them as currency
|
| Monero mostly is. What's also important, monero users are
| also against any kind of speculation. Of course most monero
| transactions are probably related to illegal activity, but
| they are in fact used as cash would.
| tromp wrote:
| I would change the emission so as to deter speculation and
| instead make it fair across generations: fix the block
| reward. I would make it as simple as possible so as to better
| stand the test of time.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> My next question is are there downsides to proof-of-stake,
| and why has bitcoin not moved towards it?_
|
| The main threat against any cryptocurrency is that a
| malicious actor will gain control of 51% of the voting power
| of the system, and use it in nefarious ways that ultimately
| break the cryptocurrency. Different Proof-of-X systems handle
| that problem in different ways.
|
| It's generally considered that Proof-of-Work is easier to 51%
| attack, but also easier to recover from that Proof-of-Stake.
| The attack and recovery both use the same mechanism - add
| more hardware mining power to the system. There is no hard
| limit on this baked into the system, it's just a matter of
| how much mining power is available to purchase irl. And
| recovery can be accomplished without having to hard fork the
| network.
|
| Proof-of-Stake on the other hand may be more difficult to 51%
| attack since it requires an attacker to obtain 51% of all the
| currency value in the system. But if this is accomplished,
| then it's difficult or impossible for the honest participants
| to rectify, since there's no more currency available to
| purchase. The attacker isn't going to sell them any of his
| 51%. So there's an inherent hard limit baked into the system,
| and the attacker now has 51% of it (including 51% of all
| newly created currency as well, since new currency is created
| by staking existing currency). The only fix is for the honest
| participants to hard-fork the network and create a new
| version of it that excludes the attacker. (There are other
| mitigations like slashing for malicious behavior designed to
| prevent attackers from gaining 51% in the first place).
|
| There are other differences, but I believe those are the main
| ones, and one reason why Bitcoin hasn't moved to it.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Proof of stake is superior. The downside others are saying
| has been proven false time after time but bitcoiners continue
| to spread the misinformation because Bitcoin relies on people
| not understanding it's downside.
|
| https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html
| harimau777 wrote:
| I think that the best solution would be gold.
| eitland wrote:
| Proof-of-work in its current form needs to die.
|
| If it is based on proof-of-work it needs to be something
| useful.
|
| If someone can prove proof-of-work won't work without wasted
| work then we need to make some sacrifices to make it
| workable. Because we cannot allow slow as molasses and/or
| extremely wasteful for all future.
|
| If it is based on proof-of-stake there needs to be a fair
| distribution model.
|
| I have some ideas for both, especially the first but I want
| to give them some more thought :-)
| HPsquared wrote:
| On the one hand we have people wanting a proof of work
| system there the work has value. On the other hand we have
| a developing AI industry giving out vast amounts of "work
| needing done". Someone needs to try connecting those.
| ruuda wrote:
| There are some downsides but also huge upsides aside from not
| wasting energy, for example offering very fast finality.
|
| Bitcoin has not moved to it, because arguably the new system
| would not be Bitcoin any more. It's a coordination problem
| where you have to get most users (including centralized
| exchanges) to stop following the PoW chain and start
| respecting the PoS chain, but they will only do that if they
| believe everybody else will. Ethereum was able to pull that
| off because Ethereum foundation and Vitalik (its creator)
| announcing and implementing, and practicing the switch many
| times, has a lot of weight. (And then still, some miners
| remained, but that chain is now known by a different name and
| not generally known as "Ethereum".) Bitcoin is a lot less
| coordinated in that sense, even less invasive changes to the
| protocol are difficult to pull off.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| even just proof-of-work where the work isn't completely fake
| and worthless would be a huge improvement, but even that
| obvious layup is beyond the reach of web3 geniuses
| woah wrote:
| Proof of stake is no different than most traditional
| governance structures such as corporations in that it relies
| on a committee with an honest majority to keep the system
| secure. Validators are supposed to act like some kind of
| completely neutral, decentralized system, but they are not.
|
| For example, the fundamental principle of PoS is slashing for
| equivocation: when validators present two alternate versions
| of history (this could be part of a "double spend" attack),
| they are supposed to be slashed and have their stake taken
| away.
|
| It takes 1/3 of validators to successfully pass off two
| versions of history to a double spend victim. However, 1/3 of
| validators can censor this slashing transaction. So if a
| double spend attack happens, the perpetrators of the attack
| are in charge of punishing themselves.
|
| So, the fundamental security mechanism of PoS, equivocation
| slashing, can in fact never work in practice to punish an
| actual attack!
|
| Another example is the idea that participation in a PoS chain
| is permissionless. This is the case in PoW. However, in PoS,
| 1/3 of the existing validator set could censor any new
| validators that would like to join, maintaining complete
| control of the chain. The existing validators only _act_ as
| if the system is permissionless.
|
| There has been a large amount of thought put into this
| paradox, and the PoS research community has settled on the
| idea that if the validator set breaks these norms, then users
| can just use a new chain with the same state, and a new, more
| trustworthy validator set. This has several problems:
|
| - Philosophically, what is the point of creating a system
| that obviously doesn't work as intended, and then when this
| is pointed out saying "that's not a problem because users
| don't have to use the system"?
|
| - The coordination of this hypothetical switch to a better
| validator set is completely unexplored since it is totally
| outside of the PoS protocol. It may be very disruptive to
| users and result in downtime, loss of funds sent during the
| switchover period, multiple new blockchains, or other issues
| and confusion.
|
| - The fact that the system does not work, and there must
| always be the possibility of human operators sorting things
| out based on an undefined recovery procedure means that truly
| autonomous and truly secure clients are not possible in PoS.
| This is a problem for both far-out concepts like self-owned
| self-driving cars, and for bridges between blockchains, which
| must always rely on either trusting the validators, or a
| multisig made of trusted people who can stop or reconfigure
| the bridge.
|
| In fact, there is no clear dividing line between a PoS
| blockchain, a PoA blockchain (this has a predefined validator
| set), a multisig, and a single entity running a chain. The
| only differences between these models are a matter degree of
| diffusion of authority.
|
| This is what Bitcoin people do not like about PoS. PoW has
| its own problems, but they are different, and PoW chains do
| not rely on a set of trusted operators in the same way.
| slavboj wrote:
| All currencies are negative sum when you only consider minting
| and transaction costs.
| nativeit wrote:
| So where's the productive output?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is correct, All currencies have transaction costs, but
| compete on having lower transaction cost than the
| alternative. The theoretical maximum is zero transaction
| cost for a transaction. It cant go positive. Components of
| transaction cost are triangulation, transfer, and trust.
| Currencies attempt to lower the cost of the transfer and
| trust components.
|
| Any positive value a currency claims to have as method for
| settling transactions is just a differential with another
| method.
|
| There is a cost to going to an ATM and carrying USD cash,
| but it is lower than carrying around 100lbs of cabbages to
| barter with.
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| Don't forget externalities. E.g. you can get a fee-free
| bank account with fee-free cash withdrawals, courtesy of
| the bank being able to loan out that money under
| fractional-reserve restrictions. In that sense
| transactions can pay for themselves. Presumably nobody
| would print money if it wasn't being put to use. Hence,
| novel currencies can enable novel business models and
| potentially do more than just lower transaction costs in
| a zero-sum way. (Admittedly the value of such business
| models at present, e.g. crypto scams, is somewhat
| debatable)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Im not sure I follow what you are saying.
|
| What externalities are you talking about?
|
| What does do you mean by a transaction to paying for
| itself?
|
| What does it mean to lower transaction costs in a zero-
| sum way? This seems like a contradiction
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What externalities are you talking about?_
|
| Economic activity. Switching from free banking [1] to a
| centralised currency made trade easier in America which
| increased the amount of trade. It's why monetary unions
| work [2].
|
| Bitcoin, similarly, has enabled certain modes of trade
| that previously didn't exist.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking
|
| [2] https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/cato/v24n1-2/cat
| o_v24n1...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think that is more of consequence resulting from lower
| transaction costs, rather than an economic externality.
| That said, I understand the definitions of externality is
| changing in popular usage.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _that is more of consequence resulting from lower
| transaction costs, rather than an economic externality_
|
| An externality is "an indirect cost or benefit to an
| uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of
| another party's (or parties') activity" [1]. If Visa
| reduced its fees, the merchant's additional profit is an
| externality.
|
| > _understand the definitions of externality is changing
| in popular usage_
|
| Third-party economic consequences have _always_ been the
| definition [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
|
| [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26617802
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| As I see it, I think the distinction between consequences
| and externalities is that externalities are applied to
| cost and pricing, but not concepts.
|
| Wikipedia doesn't go too deep into when externality
| analysis is appropriate or useful, but hints at this in
| the following sentence to the one you quoted.
|
| >Externalities can be considered as _unpriced components_
| that are involved in either consumer or producer market
| transactions
|
| Something like the advent of centralized currency isnt a
| priced good or action, so it doesnt make sense to say it
| has a positive externality (e.g the transaction price of
| "centralized currency adoption" is not a priced object).
|
| This is why it is more appropriate to say something like
| the advent of centralized currency has consequences
| instead.
|
| Regarding the Visa example, the merchant isn't a
| uninvolved 3rd party, so the profit is not an
| externality. Value on the table during an economic
| exchange is not an externality. Similarly, the value
| created or lost for each interacting party is not an
| externality.
|
| One more thoughts on common externality misconception.
|
| The general connotation is that externalities describe
| pricing failure and market failure (e.g. pollution). The
| usefulness externality analysis breaks down quickly when
| you move from realized external costs or benefits to
| opportunity costs or benefits.
|
| If a $1 pill saves a worker's life, is the value that
| person generates over the remainder of their life an
| externality. Technically yes. If you sell them a pill
| again a year later, the same is true. That doesnt mean
| the pill is priced incorrectly.
|
| This illustrates how externalities can be duplicative and
| should not be confused with pricing errors.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the transaction price of "centralized currency
| adoption" is not a priced object_
|
| Of course it is. Joining a currency union carries costs.
|
| Broadly speaking, you're correct: the term has ambiguous
| meaning. My point is that isn't something new, but an
| element that has always been with the term.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think that still runs afoul of the "uninvolved 3rd
| party" part of the definition.
|
| Two actors can both generate value from a transaction due
| to a difference between price and their respective
| utility value for what is traded. This producer and
| consumer surplus is explicitly distinct from
| externalities.
|
| If there is a currency deal between the US and Argentina,
| the consequences to those countries are not an
| externality. However, if this deal produces a 2nd order
| change in the Chinese RMB, some would call that an
| externality, although I would call it a consequence
| (because externality implies mispricing)
| PeterisP wrote:
| For the economic impact of monetary systems, the main role
| of currencies is handling credit - handling direct
| transactions is intuitively the direct application, but the
| impact of transaction costs ('costs' in the economic theory
| sense, not only the direct expenses but also any barriers,
| difficulties, risks, etc) on the economy, while
| significant, is not as huge as the impact of availability
| of credit and supply of money.
|
| For example, when considering dollars, having the
| possibility to detach the dollar from the gold standard was
| so extremely valuable to the economy that all the possible
| transaction costs with handling paper or coins are a
| rounding error compared to that. Enabling fractional
| reserve banking is an immense effect on the productive
| output, due to the big increase in productive investment it
| enables, so it matters a lot whether a monetary system can
| support that. Historical changes to what metals were used
| for coins had a huge impact on economy not because of some
| decrease in transaction costs but because of changes to
| money supply. Etc.
|
| At it's core, the primary function of finance is (and
| arguably has historically always been) handling debt, not
| handling transfers. So evaluating a currency system on the
| basis of how good it is for transactions is kind of putting
| the cart ahead of the horse, if the nature of that currency
| has, as most cryptocurrencies do, a major impact on the
| money supply (and thus handling debt).
| guywithahat wrote:
| Currencies are used to facilitate trade, which I suppose
| would be their productive output
| ada1981 wrote:
| If you think crypto is a zero sum game, try fiat!
| rvz wrote:
| At least they don't take people's jobs away or threaten /
| replace them. Unlike AI, which also burns GPUs, emits CO2 and
| the money is all evaporated into inference and training costs
| with little to no efficient alternatives to reduce it and also
| wasting tons of water.
|
| Cryptocurrencies at least have alternative efficient methods of
| consensus, such as proof-of-stake making it possible to reduce
| the said resources as much as 95%.
|
| AI (Deep Learning) still does not have practical efficient and
| viable greener alternatives to neither inference or training in
| production.
| n_ary wrote:
| While you may see that I vigorously comment against all the
| AI hype, I do not believe AI is as useless and wasteful as
| crypto currencies.
|
| Beyond the LLM fad, AI is also being used in other
| pharmaceutical and scientific research as well as modern
| weather and disaster forecasting.
|
| Also, I believe LLMs will get better over time and far
| cheaper to operate once they become more widely adapted.
| Think the super computers of our grand-dad era vs your
| Android/iPhone.
|
| AI will get better over time and become more beneficial to
| us, but not in the form of current over hype fad that is
| flying because Sama needs to protect his investment and exit,
| he is a businessman above all else. AI innovation will come
| from the silent group who are busy with actual development
| and less hype generation. There is a saying that empty
| whistle makes most noise etc.
|
| My IDE(mostly jetbrains products) make me 10x more
| productive. Claude/Phind saves me immense amount of time not
| having to sort through 100 garbage SEO spam results or try to
| waste time reading incoherent out dated
| documentation(followed by having to look through the source
| code) to find an important concept or reference to some third
| party library/application. These are real values that not
| only makes my day less stressful, it also makes my employer
| benefit accordingly by having me available to other important
| stuff with my freed time during working hours.
|
| Crypto currency did not help anyone, only helped some
| grifters get rich, some ignorant people to lose money and
| numerous crooks to run ransomware attacks and easier time
| moving the loot.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> GPUs burned_
|
| Bitcoin doesn't use GPUs, just ASICs. You may be thinking of
| Ethereum or others.
| lagniappe wrote:
| Ethereum doesn't use GPUs. You may be thinking of others.
| 127 wrote:
| According to the same logic, life is also a negative sum game.
| jameslk wrote:
| Seems like a privileged point of view if you live somewhere
| with a mostly stable currency (ie not rapidly inflating
| currency) and easy access to banking
| wmf wrote:
| His "fortune" is mostly ownership of Binance which is now under
| the thumb of the US government. If--as widely theorized--
| Binance's secret ingredient is crime then it's not going to be
| worth what it once was.
| earnesti wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that he also has personal BTC stash. Maybe not
| billions though.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Most likely multiple anonymous wallets of different cryptos.
| The real question is whether anyone else has access to
| them... if yes I expect there to be nothing left.
| wmf wrote:
| I think his wife is holding everything in Dubai.
| mr90210 wrote:
| After SBF, he'd be pretty stupid for not stashing his assets
| just in case.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Binance far and away dominates non-United States volume of
| crypto trading. If you think that Coinbase, a publicly traded
| US company, has real volume and earns a fee for that, then it's
| not hard to understand why Binance has real revenues and value.
| malux85 wrote:
| I don't think anyone is disputing it's volume and fees, I
| think what they are pointing out is that a nontrivial, maybe
| majority of that, is proceeds of crime, which makes the
| business somewhat less attractive.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| Let's just say they were very ambivalent about KYC. They had a
| lot of phantom liquidity as well, Binance pioneered the scam
| wick.
| krmboya wrote:
| There is Binance US and Binance the global version. I expect
| Binance US to be tailored to US laws and regulations, but are
| you implying the global version is also under tight US govt
| control?
| wmf wrote:
| May 2024: "The United States Department of Justice (DOJ)
| appointed Forensic Risk Alliance (FRA) to serve as the
| outside monitor over the crypto exchange Binance. Binance
| must undergo a monitorship of three years as part of its plea
| deal with the DOJ related to money laundering violations."
| https://www.theblock.co/post/293834/doj-taps-fra-over-
| sulliv...
| colechristensen wrote:
| Yes, global banks also fall under US control if they want to
| transact with anything in the US financial system. Less so if
| they don't have American customers, but they still do have to
| follow American laws.
|
| For example several very old Swiss banks have been shut down
| by US regulators because they were doing business in the US
| with US citizens and their secrecy was being used to break US
| law by Americans.
| poincaredisk wrote:
| Do you have a source for that? It sounds interesting and I
| want to learn more, as I was not aware of anything like
| this happening.
| gomerspiles wrote:
| AFAIK significant banks didn't really shut down over
| FATCA, some have paid fines or higher tax rates and most
| of them do the minimum for anyone who matches any of the
| criteria for persecuting a possible US person, within the
| limits of the institution's local laws, if any.
|
| From a general government structure POV, I respected a
| Congress more than the prevalent US views, but I don't
| respect the US Congress any more.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| The decrease in the number of Swiss banks prior to the UBS-
| Credit Suisse merger was largely a product of Swiss bank
| consolidation in the 1990s. UBS and Swiss Bank Corporation
| were the first and third largest Swiss banks when they
| merged in 1998. Credit Suisse was the second largest Swiss
| Bank when they acquired Switzerland's then fourth largest
| bank, Volksbank in 1993 and they had also acquired
| Switzerlands oldest bank, Bank Leu just a few years before
| that.
| tim333 wrote:
| Google says net worth 60bn. I think he'll be ok even if that
| goes down a bit.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Journalist: "What are you going to do next??"
|
| CZ: "I'm buying Disney World!"
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| Well played.
|
| Tbh it will be curious to see next steps.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| CZ was at Lompoch I take it at a Low?
| mchannon wrote:
| Far more likely he was at the (a?) satellite camp at Lompoc.
| Minimum security satellite camps share a small percentage of
| their facilities with a nearby low or medium:
|
| R&D (that's Receiving & Discharge to you), warehouse, mail
| center.
|
| FYI, Lompoc is pronounced Lom-poke to the townies. Not sure how
| the inmates pronounce it.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| https://archive.ph/WHXYL
| Vecr wrote:
| Hope he has something in place for the kidnap risk. Also hope his
| lawyers credibly claim they will demand continual proof-of-life
| to engage, otherwise kidnapping might not be the end to it.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Where is Kyle Davies of 3AC?
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| Based Mr. Zhao, showing us crime pays while we're all cheering
| "and how!"
| Eddieethan wrote:
| Money or Crypto asset lost to Scammers are Recoverable, i was
| able to recover 180K worth of bitcoin i lost to an investment
| scam, thanks to easyrecoveryassets@gmailom as guaranty they get
| the job done, they take payment only after my funds was
| successfully recovered.
| ronsor wrote:
| You have negative karma because you are promoting a scam to
| solve a scam.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-09-27 23:02 UTC)