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$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.

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$76 Billion a Day: How Binance Became the World's Biggest Crypto Exchange

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  • Remember Mt. Gox (Score:3, Insightful)

    by don_xvi ( 4280391 ) on Friday November 12, 2021 @10:26AM (#61981433)
    Has anything else been as dominant since Mt. Gox? That didn't turn out well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Ironic how all cryptocurrencies will eventually cause another economic meltdown - the very thing it was born out of, and claimed to want to prevent.

    • If cryptos can cause a meltdown of the rest of the system, or systems outside of their own, maybe someone in THAT system should address how much of a house of cards it is. The whole point if the Fed was to create a system that wouldn't melt down all the time. But it sounds to me like a slight breeze could send it all toppling. Maybe the boom and bust cycles of the markets are healthier in the long term than the imagined security fueled by corrupt bankers.
      • 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.

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday November 12, 2021 @10:44AM (#61981501)

    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.

    • 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

      • 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

  • this is the second or third advertisement binance pays for in slashdot. It's one of the worst exchanges available, incorporated in some obscure island, under investigation by authorities does not like KYC. most of the volume is fake of course from itself and affiliated market ... manipul^h^h^h makers who provide ... prof^h^h^h liquidity. It's not FDIC or FCA insured of course. Avoid like the plague.
  • Sell jeans to the gold rushers, and make a fortune.

  • "What good is electricity in the home, anyway?"

    "Senator, in 20 years, you'll be taxing it."

  • .. this week. There fixed that for ya. Sometime this weekend, the CEO will cash out and disappear, or they'll get hacked, and it'll be someone else.

    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.
    • by ffejie ( 779512 )
      I guess you can choose not to believe a fact, but that's the volume they're doing - it's publicly available so it's not disputed.

      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.
  • This is an incredible amount. I can't even imagine how huge this money can be. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are now quite popular and every day more and more people start trading and investing. I'm no exception, so with the help of https://www.btctopic.com/ [btctopic.com] which my friend advised me, I decided to try my hand at this too.

It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river. -- Abraham Lincoln

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