$76 Billion a Day: How Binance Became the World's Biggest Crypto Exchange (wsj.com) 46
The world's fastest-growing major financial exchange has no head office or formal address, lacks licenses in countries where it operates and has a chief executive who until recently wouldn't answer questions about his location. From a report: Started just four years ago, Binance is the exchange giant that towers over the digital currency world, a crypto equivalent of the London, New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges combined. After a burst of growth, Binance processes more trades for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether each day, $76 billion worth, than its four largest competitors put together, according to data provider CryptoCompare.
The years of largely unfettered, unregulated growth for Binance in particular and the crypto industry broadly, however, are coming to an end. Financial regulators increasingly worry that digital assets, until recently dismissed by some as a fad, have grown so quickly they now are systemically important. In an October speech, Bank of England official Jon Cunliffe brought up the 2008 subprime-mortgage-fueled crisis and said of crypto, "When something in the financial system is growing very fast, and growing in largely unregulated space, financial stability authorities have to sit up and take notice." Binance is drawing the most regulatory attention. Authorities in a dozen countries have cautioned users in recent months the exchange is unregistered or not authorized to provide various services.
The years of largely unfettered, unregulated growth for Binance in particular and the crypto industry broadly, however, are coming to an end. Financial regulators increasingly worry that digital assets, until recently dismissed by some as a fad, have grown so quickly they now are systemically important. In an October speech, Bank of England official Jon Cunliffe brought up the 2008 subprime-mortgage-fueled crisis and said of crypto, "When something in the financial system is growing very fast, and growing in largely unregulated space, financial stability authorities have to sit up and take notice." Binance is drawing the most regulatory attention. Authorities in a dozen countries have cautioned users in recent months the exchange is unregistered or not authorized to provide various services.
Re:To hell with govt oversight (Score:5, Interesting)
-Good luck with that.
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Well, the Beta and volatility on Crypto is so crazy high that it serves an entirely different purpose than bonds.
Real inflation has been in the ~6% range for decades; it just hasn’t impacted the basket due to cheap goods imports. If you want to out-pace inflation you don’t invest in T-Bills.
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"DeFi" = "Deregulated Finance" (Score:1)
Don't let the toxic crypto bros fool you: "DeFi" means "Deregulated Finance", not "decentralized" as they're trying to pass it off as.
The crypto bros all want to wrestle control away from governments, and do it without any oversight, and hence no accountability. Why else do you think they're all throwing a fit whenever the specter of regulation comes up (you know, the thing all legitimate currencies have to adhere to?)
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. I don't see a lot of benefits from the heavy-handed regulations in the market. Only lost potential and decades of corruption that benefit the rich.
Then you're an idiot and a moron, or one of those greedy corrupt rich assholes you pretend not to be. Either that or you've never studied history.
Ironic how the next economic meltdown will be caused by crypto and because of people like you.
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> I love how /. likes to label me a troll. There is nothing troll about my post, neither in intent nor wording. In fact, there are several clever references and I thought it was a good comment. But whatever ./. Never change.
Slashdot is full of really old techies, like geriatric. It gave up on attracting new people decades ago. (for example, its written in perl) Basically, this place is social media for the first internet bubble.
While in the early days those people may have held a few new ideas (linux, op
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Another point of contention is that Slashdot keeps posting these crypto currency stories, without offering the ability for users to filter those out from the preferences.
This is something I've pointed out before [slashdot.org]: Slashdot clearly has a vested interest in all this, and it explains why there's so many of these stories showing up.
In fact, I suspect that many of the pro-Bitcoin posters that show up on Slashdot are themselves editors on here, because of the aforementioned vested interest, how submitted stories t
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Remember Mt. Gox (Score:3, Insightful)
It'll cause the next meltdown (Score:1, Insightful)
Ironic how all cryptocurrencies will eventually cause another economic meltdown - the very thing it was born out of, and claimed to want to prevent.
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All it takes is leverage. Same thing that causes all crashes, which is why some regulation might be a good thing for the health of the cryptocurrency “system.” Easy to ignore when prices are going up, but as they fall there are a lot of things that can accelerate things.
There are always people that think they are smarter than the next guy and that they are insulated until it happens to them.
Money Laundering (Score:3)
It's pretty obvious that they became so large because they are/were an easy way to launder money very cheaply. I think they were forced to put in some anti-money laundering measures (because it was so rampant) but I'm betting they try not to make it difficult because they are effectively getting a cut of the money.
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With most places having extensive AML/KYC stuff, I'd probably not try using cryptocurrencies, especially BTC, for this sort of stuff. Blockchains are forever, and it doesn't take much... just one link, no matter how tenuous, be it an IP address, a tracking cookie, canvas fingerprint, to link someone to a wallet, and the prosecution can sit back and let the ledger do the talking.
It seems like NFT transactions are now the mainstay for this sort of stuff. Party "A" has their ill-gotten gains in party "B"'s w
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Here's the thing... they did not have AML or KYC in place until they were forced to. You may not know this but cryptocurrency is easiest and fastest way to launder money because there are always exchanges that aren't tracking anything or not enough. They swap between currencies, wallets, and any digital mediary they can use and the trail becomes untraceable at some point. Plenty of people have been busted for money laundering using cryptocurrencies because of investigations but lots of smaller fish have
binance is not the biggest exchange (Score:2, Interesting)
Like Levi Strauss? (Score:2)
Sell jeans to the gold rushers, and make a fortune.
What good is a senator, anyway? (Score:2)
"What good is electricity in the home, anyway?"
"Senator, in 20 years, you'll be taxing it."
Biggest player in crypto (Score:2)
Plus. 76 billion per day? I don't believe it. Simply. Don't. Believe it. Not in terms of actual dollar value. That's like 0.1% of the firkin US gdp. Newwwwpp.
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The crypto volumes are totally nuts. Remember, when someone says $76B, that could be $1B 76 times, or $76B one time each. In Binance's (and all crypto exchanges) it's likely something like $10B 7-8 times per day. There are some day traders out there that are driving a ton of volume.
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