crypt1d

In general I support this but the idea starts to fall apart real quick if your primary place of work is in front of a computer.

Paypal does this as well.

They'll convert to your card's currency automatically and the option to revert is hidden behind an inconspicuous "See other currency options" prompt

This never would have happened if all these orgs used a blockchain.

/sarcasm

/but is it really?

Farcaster has been a nice refreshment for me. Currently a lot of developer types are present on the platform and I've seen lots of insightful conversations there.

Tokens are frozen "in-place" pending investigation. It differs from how it works with btc, because the government does not have control of the private keys that manage the addresses in question - so they go to Tether who controls the smart contract that manages the transactions of the tokens.

This, in practice, means that the US government controls the mentioned tokens for the moment. What happens with them depends entirely on the outcome of the investigation.

Neither of those statements is true. Bitcoin seized by US government is often sold off in auctions[1]. Tether seized by the government could also be redeemed for fiat eventually, following due process.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonkochkodin/2023/03/31/us-...

EDIT: I see now that you were actually comparing the case of USDT freeze against Bitcoin seizures. Nevertheless, Tether doesn't simply get to keep the USD value of the frozen tokens. US government would want to recover that.

I spent a good chunk of my youth in the kafana, AMA :)

Joking aside, my feelings about it are mixed. I have fond memories of good laughs and parties with friends, but also can't help but notice a lot of black outs and hangovers the day after :) don't get me wrong though, if you are a tourist, you should definitely experience it.

Not really. SEC investigations are civil, not criminal. They might end up paying a fine, but there is no risk of jail time or anything similar. Also, while I like Kraken as an exchange, its market share is not significant enough for it to matter in the big picture.

The rumour about Binance indictment by DoJ has been going around for 1-2 years now. Its one of the last remaining pieces of major news that could have potentially negatively affected the industry. After two years of prosecutions, regulatory uncertainty and general poor market conditions, its only now starting to feel like there's light at the end of the tunnel.

While I can see how it helps clear the bad image of the industry, the two are not directly related. The ETF was/is going to get approved regardless.

Happy to see this whole thing finally coming to an end, its a nice wrap to the dead market we've had for the past 2 years. I'm excited for 2024 in crypto!

from what I know, they still have their stake, but they will eventually sell it

Worth a lot. It probably would have been enough to plug the hole from stealing customer funds, if he managed to stay afloat for a few more months. Ah, the irony.

Linkedin is one of those 'necessary evil' services that we all agree to use because everyone else does, but nobody actually likes. While I realise the network effect is hard to break, I look forward to somebody finally disrupting it - even if it results in a slightly-less bad product.

I am really impressed by what the tailscale folks have been building. I use their product suite regularly and have nothing but good things to say about it. I will be tinkering with this mod as well starting next week ;)

keep it up guys!

Wow. I had the same issue in my previous apartment (where I was using the Marcus chair), but I could never figure it out. I just always assumed its a faulty monitor.

We seem to have a arrived at a stage of collective thought in which every action which is not directly confrontational against those that have a different belief system, is seen an acknowledgement of its support. Discussions on any topic have become so polarising that even those that try to remain neutral are being met with hostility and cancel culture treatment.

I have never been so pessimistic about the future of the world as I am today.

Regulated activity here refers to futures and options trading, which was indeed unavailable on Binance for UK residents for a while now. Spot trading is a different story.

I used to wonder this a lot as well. It struck me as odd that a crowd of people with whom I'd often share a lot of the same values and beliefs, would be pretty much point blank against a whole industry that I've been so heavily involved with for many years. On a few occasions, it even shook my confidence and made me wonder if I'm doing the right thing. If so many smart people are against crypto, am I the crazy one?

I have since learned to live with it. In the same way that I live with the fact that crypto is full of grifters, I've learned to live with the fact that majority of the world has a very narrow view of what the space is about. The only thing that I find unfortunate now-a-days is how quick people are to turn towards radical thoughts and approaches, without even considering that they might not know what they are talking about.

disappointed to see them still selling these with 8gb RAM. More than a dozen chrome tabs and a few discord servers has been enough to crash/significantly slow down my m1 mac mini

edit: the ad says up to 24/32GB of ram, but seems like 8gb/16gb models are the only ones available for pre-order at the moment.

Its a pretty big leap from "you cannot withdraw this particular stablecoin at the moment, use another one" to "you cannot withdraw your cash". Devil is in the details.

USDC withdrawals have been enabled again, but I don't suppose that's HN front-page worthy as much as the panic inducing titles.

https://twitter.com/binance/status/1602708590271385600?s=20&...

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree then. If customers didn't want their USDC deposits converted, they shouldn't have used Binance. Its not a public service company. Same goes for your expectations of custody, they never claimed to be one.

Conversions are even announced when you go to deposit USDC:

"Please note that your USDC Deposit will be auto-converted to BUSD at a 1:1 Ratio. Please refer to announcement details. https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/e62f703604a9..."

I don't see how your point holds, besides "customer expected X, but got Y" - but this is because customer is misinformed, not because Binance has an obligation to store USDC 1:1 (in this case).

Fair question.

Although, in practice, I don't think they would buy USDC via BUSD, but use their cash reserves for that. The cash reserves correspond (allegedly) 1:1 to BUSD so they would need to burn equivalent amount of BUSD as well. This all means that Binance would always value BUSD at 1 USD. I don't see a scenario where BUSD falls to 0.5usd if there are no shenanigans happening with the cash reserves.

Interesting. Because a lot of people think they're an exchange and use BInance as such.

...that's what I said?

What? Someone trusted Binance to store USDC. The conversions should not have happened.

Conversions were announced timely. See https://www.binance.com/en/support/faq/what-is-busd-auto-con...

No. Nobody is expecting that. You're the only person that mentioned it.

Its the logical conclusion of people expecting Binance to hold full USDC deposit amounts, even when most/all USDC was converted to BUSD.

Not sure I follow. Why would they mint BUSD if people are withdrawing other coins?

BUSD is just USD denominated in tokens on chain, each token represents 1 usd at their bank so they cannot (or rather, should not) mint more than they have in custody.

- USDC on Binance is not 1:1 backed by USDC, but by another stable coin such as BUSD or perhaps even USDT. Both of them are much harder to convert into real dollars!

This is not true in any way. First, you do not hold USDC on Binance, you hold BUSD. Your USDC deposits are automatically converted to BUSD. Neither USDT nor BUSD is "hard" to convert to real dollars. Swap them to USDC on Uniswap and do whatever you please with them.

- Binance is obviously not prepared for a bank run, this is happening on a Monday/Tuesday, not even a weekend, and the withdrawals issued started yesterday while the banks where open! As of this post, USDC withdrawals have been suspended for at least 14 hours!

As I said, you can withdraw in other stablecoins. If you go to a bank, and you cannot withdraw USD at that moment, but you can withdraw EUR - does that mean the bank is insolvent?

They are not a custody service, they are an exchange. They are not obliged to hold USDC, if all customers have their assets in BUSD due to the conversions that happened. Are you expecting Binance to have 1:1 BUSD on hand, in addition to holding the same amount in USDC as well (so 2x the amount of funds deposited by the customers)?

Nobody said BUSD == USDC. But comparing it to UST (an algorithmic stablecoin nonetheless) is, at best, misleading.

I honestly expected more from the HN crowd. The comments here are disturbingly inaccurate and fear mongering. For those of you that don't want to sift through the BS and just get the gist (from someone deep in this space):

- Binance suspended USDC withdrawals. You can still withdraw in other stablecoins, fiat, or crypto. You can withdraw BUSD and swap to USDC on another exchange (dex). So really, this is not a big deal.

- The reason why this happened is - a while ago, Binance started automatically converting user USDC to BUSD upon deposits. Since then, we've then seen large amounts of USDC being sent to Circle from Binance, supposedly for redemption purposes.

- This now (likely) means that Binance has a lot of cash on hand, but not enough USDC to process the current withdrawal frenzy. So they have to go to their redemption bridge and convert their cash back to USDC. As such, the explanation given by CZ is very plausible.

- Withdrawal suspensions are not an uncommon occurrence on Binance, or any other exchange for that matter. You are only noticing this now because the market participants suffer from PTSD from other exchanges going under and the effect of the news is amplified.

- The fear seems to be largely coming from people associating the withdrawal suspension with the recent FTX fiasco. However, and especially without understanding the context of those suspensions, its important to remember - correlation does not mean causation.

- It also comes from people expecting Binance to have USDC at 1:1 ratio liquid, but thats not the case due to the auto conversion mentioned, and explained, by Binance.

- Its also worth noting that BUSD is not a Binance product. Its managed by Paxos, which is a separate entity.

Ultimately, the r/r here is clear: it takes little effort to withdraw and stay safe, but the downside is huge if Binance goes under. So its natural for people to decide to withdraw even when chances of it blowing up are slim.

Withdraw your coins if you are worried, preferably via fiat to a bank. But, please, don't go around spreading panic about things you don't understand or lack the context to judge.

Pretty much everyone in crypto has done business with Alameda. That doesn't automatically make them insolvent.