Below are some examples (but by no means exhaustive) that would qualify as collapse:
No withdrawals for 14 days
BNB market cap below $1B (unless it is phased out as planned by the company) for >14 days
Files for bankruptcy
1,000
3.00As part of its plea settlement, Binance had agreed to pay $4.3 billion in fines — real money, not tethers — to US regulatory agencies. The first installment of $898,618,825 is due on March 25 — that’s 30 days after the court approved their guilty plea. $1,612,031,763 is due within six months, and the final $1,805,475,575 is due within 15 months. [Sentencing memo, PDF; Bloomberg, archive]
If you read this essay you should think that something should break:
https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/bond-villain-compliance-strategy/
He mentions the SEC:
So anyhow, Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao (known nearly universally as CZ) have recently pleaded guilty to operating the world’s largest criminal conspiracy to launder money, paying more than $4 billion in fines. This settles a long-running investigation involving the DOJ, CFTC, FinCEN, and assorted other parts of the U.S. regulatory state. Importantly, it does not resolve the SEC’s parallel action.
But still ... Madoff kept his fraud running for 17 years 😭
@uair01 Binance’s Chief Compliance Officer Samuel Lim:
“[We are] operating as a fking unlicensed security exchange in the U.S. bro.”
Binance has chests full of cash and some talented operators, and recent DoJ cases against it seem to have fallen short of KOing it. I don't think they are totally out of the woods yet and will be particularly vulnerable until CZ comes back at the helm. They also lost a lot of senior talent in the past year and will start to feel the effect of that.
Reading this good book:
The author says that fraudsters rarely stop frauding. And the Binance leadership is suspect. They will probably not become saints soon.
This is one of the few low probability markets I'm not betting against. My whole strategy revolves around taking advantage of manifolds inherrent tendency to overvalue extremes, but Binance has been a shithole for a long time. I was certain it would collapse any time since 5+ years ago. I'm impressed they've made it this far, but especially now with all the shenanigans going on I think it's not unlikely that they fall.
@MP it's a mystery to me. I've read a lot of anti crypto information and no one has a good explanation why it is still afloat and not crashed.
Apparently short term limits to withdrawals are somewhat common for Binance, so probably should update upwards on the possibility of no withdrawals.... https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-limits-withdrawals-in-europe
Bitstamp version of this https://manifold.markets/vlad/will-bitstamp-be-insolvent-by-the-e
@uair01 The crazy part is that in normal finance, if people expected a ~10% chance of insolvency, there would be a huge exit. Apparently in crypto, it's just business as usual....
https://www.semafor.com/article/08/02/2023/us-prosecutors-worry-binance-charges-could-cause-run-on-exchange
Quoting Molly White: To me, this seems to suggest they’re concerned that Binance is insolvent, because otherwise a run on the exchange (which should simply be custodying cryptocurrencies, not lending them out or doing other things with them as turned out to be the case with FTX) should not be catastrophic. (https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/issue-35-pondering-my-orb)
Laid off 1,000 employees (discussed in similar market)
