REKT
Looks like '4' was a Simpsons-like prophecy for how many billions he'd have to pay to the department of justice to stay out of prison. Very cool.
End of an era
CZ just made one hell of a plea deal that will keep Binance alive, but at what cost? Ah yes well the cost was $4.3B dollars and a forced resignation. I can't say I'm really surprised, shocked, or sad about it. Honestly this was a long time coming considering that Binance blatantly allowed criminals to run rampant on the platform with zero oversight.
Is this a biased outlook?
After all many of us believe in a permissionless future of borderless infrastructure. Is it really fair to hold people accountable when all they are doing is providing infrastructure? That's certainly a valid opinion to take into consideration when assessing the pros and cons of flat architecture.
At the same time we must also acknowledge the fact that the infrastructure in question is supposed to be DECENTRALIZED. That means by definition the entire centralized exchange business model is a bit of a scam and against the tenants of what we stand for. People like CZ aren't supposed to have that much power. Without fail everyone that acquires this level of flex tends to abuse it, and Binance is certainly no exception.
Sure would be nice if the DOJ could give a shoutout to the entire Steem debacle that created Hive in the first place, but of course they won't. bigger fish to fry, as they say. In addition to allowing criminals to use Binance as a no-holds-barred one-stop-shop for shuffling crypto around, they also provided futures services to Americans, comingled assets with their sister company Binance.US, and a slew of other KYC/AML violations. And these are only the crimes in which they were caught. It's all but guaranteed that they were doing all kinds of shady stuff in the background. Tip of the iceberg.
What's funny is that we all know for a fact that Justin Sun is a much more openly blatant criminal than CZ, and they even worked together at least once if only to hostile takeover Steem with customer assets. At the end of the day I have to assume that this lawsuit had very little to do with breaking the law and everything to do with simply pissing off the wrong people while simultaneously having great success while doing it. If CZ had been feeding the NSA data behind closed doors would the DOJ really have taken this kind of action? Maybe, maybe not. Gee I suppose the chances of that happening now as a result of this plea are much higher, wouldn't you say? Of course this is all wild conjecture based on zero evidence, but it's fun to speculate.
Number go down!
Crypto was not happy about the news today and Bitcoin dominance has gone up a bit. Alts have bled and BTC is only down less than 2% thus far. Really makes you wonder if institutions are just standing there with bags open waiting to scoop up any and all BTC that gets dumped on the market before ETF approval. A conspiracy theorist might even say the timing of these events is a little suspect, especially when coming off the heels of yet another SEC lawsuit against Kraken and friends. I won't go so far though as none of these events are particularly surprising.
"The SEC famously argues that digital asset trading platforms like Kraken can simply 'come in and register' with the agency," the company said in a blog post. "As most securities law experts know, there is not a single law on the books supporting this position."
Kraken is facing charges for failing to register along with comingling assets
In addition, the following networks have been labeled as securities.
These tokens include Cardano (ADA), Cosmos (ATOM), Dash (DASH), Filecoin (FIL), Internet Computer (ICP), Polygon (MATIC), and Solana (SOL), among others.
It's strange to see a list like this and be somewhat excited about it.
First of all I think many would agree that Ripple's XRP is more offensive than all of these tokens. Ripple already won their lawsuit. What possible chance does the SEC have of winning the fight elsewhere? Second, DASH was launched in January 2014. Isn't that just embarrassing for the SEC? What possible excuse could they have for allowing an unregistered security to operate for 10 years right under their noses? That's just comical.
Also I have a rather irrational hatred of Cardano and the poser behind it Charles Hodkinson, so it's satisfying to see that ADA made the list. I have a much more rational dislike of SOL so again I chuckle to see it made the cut. But the real point I would like to make is what happens when Hive gets onto one of these lists? How will they justify it? Who will they say is in charge? I almost want that kind of publicity to find us even though laying low is by far the superior position to be in at the moment.
Then again if I were blocktrades I'd definitely consider unloading some Hive in 2025 just to rebalance the scales a bit. Could be a liability at this point considering how outrageous regulators are becoming. From what I can tell he's at the top of the Hive list in terms potential targets of regulatory overreach. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Conclusion
I wonder who the next CEO of Binance will be. Hey maybe they'll choose Justin Sun! Wouldn't that be fabulous? lol. Seriously though I am curious. In any case we seem to be caught in a riptide of unfavorable news, but the market is handling it better than I would have expected. Honestly I feel like we should be at $34k right now or even on our way to confirming former resistance at $31k. Nope, instead we keep floating on low volume. The market doesn't seem to care.
And if the market doesn't care then I guess I don't either.
CZ got what was coming to him.
Comment if you agree.
Before any ETF or institutional money comes pouring in it has to be cleaned up so they are not compliant or implicated. It's not about 4 billion dollars it's about power. Tether will be next. The 'Bull' market just got shut down. FFS. :\ these **** mean business and they are so sly and cunning. I don't believe much will remain other than BTC and XRP. When tether blows up there will only be USDC with its quickly diminishing 30 odd billion MC to exit a trillion dollar crypto market cap. It will go from trillion to 50 billion in a flash. Hopefully HBD can take some of the slack. :D They want an ETF because that will be pretty much the only way to get in on bitcoin for anybody, and once they can re hypothacate and distort the supply demand with shit that doesn't exist they can control it like they do the precious metals. basically its bed time. In that game only the folks with the deepest pockets and most corrupt friends win. The irony is that retailers think an ETF will benefit them, this could not be further from the truth.
Bitcoin has been in a bull market for a year now and will continue on with the 4-year cycle just like we always do.
The regulators are forcing crypto to develop alternative means of exchange like DEXes.
All to be expected really.
When the banking sector was under attack liquidity retreated into BTC.
If Tether is under attack liquidity will once again retreat into BTC.
All the smart money that got this news early did not react in a bearish manner.
Only after a delayed reaction aftershock of the plebs did price decline today.
In response to basically the best possible outcome we could have expected (plea).
I'm unconvinced I need to be worried about anything just yet.
All I see if paper hands panicking.
Some wild shit man! I did not have this in my bingo chips but I guess maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention.
Sharks circling the school of fish and flipping off the fat ones on the outside. Hopefully we can turn things around! Lotta sketchy shit.
With this centralization of more - what do you think is gonna happen to bitcoin? Will it get more centralized and the value tanked because it’s split into millions or billions of worthless digital IOU’s?
I'm a little confused about why everyone seems to think that more paper Bitcoin will exist after the regulators move in. BTC is easily verifiable. It's a thousand times easier to audit. Paper Bitcoin (IE shorting Bitcoin) has destroyed every institution that dared fuck around. Why risk it when you can just play by the rules and make free billions?
Yeah I guess I succumbed to the FUD for a bit lol. I guess the paper bitcoin is for the boomers that are dying off anyway and the young people that are pretty tech savvy won’t waste their time with that hogwash
I think the news was bad short term, but good long term. CZ is a controversial figure and has some real issue with the US regulators. If we can get get a little breathing room between him and the space maybe we can get some favorable rulings that help with the next adoption cycle.
There is already a surprisingly crazy amount of money in the cryptocurrency business, and probably there will be even more in it in the future.
CZ seized the moment when the power was thrown at him. Its nearly impossible to be exposed to such a drug and not OD, so yeah, he might be paying a fine, but we all know those are just peanuts.
It reminds me of Ross who only made a website like eBay.
This market had so many battle scars it doesnt care anymore, CZ takes a vacation and bull market resumes
Definitely, was wondering about hive too recently while discussing with a friend @Michealchijioke who said they can come after the witnesses who are based in thier location as hive is so transparent that anyone that can read and write can audit ghe blockchain
dealing with such a big market as a leader, pose significant risk
I think 4B$ is cheap for Get out of jail card and to keep going as usual
If I'm the DOJ I collect the $4B in Bitcoin. It's damn near instantaneous. Then put out a press release about it and slowly feed it into the market as they watch it race to $50k. They're all crooks anyway. Might as well turn $4B into $6B along the way...
Woke up with this bleeding news that is everywhere......It is not easy to make money without manipulating the system.....it's too tricky to handle so much money
What do you think is CZs actual net worth?
10.2 billion, the 50 mill was basically nothing to him.
Damn, nice fortune
It shows that you can be too big for action. The fines a pittance for the amount of money they make off people and the games they been playing like false alerts on markets to drive investment. But the SEC has it's hands tied if it closes them down Crypto will be crushed and there will be a lot more peed off investors and.... voters
The alts are bleeding. Anyone who is not careful about investing in coins may lose
Is it possible for some alts not to rise even when there is a bull run?
It's all about Blackrock, Coinbase and its shareholders. These are going to be doing big business with BTC once the ETF is approved and they had to crush competition so that plebs stay out of Binance or Kraken and opt for Coinbase and the fucking ETFs that are going to be approved.
Binance going down is bullish for crypto, cuz crypto was supposed to be decentralized...
It will become even more centralized if binance goes under, Coinbase will rule the roost. A lot of those setting up ETF's have stated Coinbase as the custodian to be used if the are agreed, huge amounts of funds soon to be held there.
True. Very few see this unfortunately.
Market does not care... Nothing can stop what is coming for #BTC!
CZ just tweeted:
Read his Tweet: