So basically the SEC failed to protect people from that ponzi scammer boy SBF was, but they're going after the like of Binance and Coinbase, who, so far, never stole a cent from anyone?
In America you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Therefore, under our legal system, Binance.US is presumed to not have stolen anyone's money until the SEC passes the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
These aren’t criminal charges. The standard is preponderance of evidence.
It is interesting however, the SEC purportedly has tons of evidence of wrongdoing at these exchanges but completely missed FTX which was a massive fraud. Color me skeptical, it's almost like they are saving face for missing FTX. FTX was even regulated to some extent -- I remember you were able to buy tokenized versions of US stocks on there.
"...is there a Snopes fact checked source?..."
I'm honestly finding it more and more difficult to believe there are actual biological people who think and talk this way...
0: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/07/business/binance-cash-ban...
The SEC has turned around 3 months after these banks collapsed and launched significant legal action against Binance and Coinbase, which says that what they found was serious enough to move really quickly against these guys. No idea what they found, but I have feeling we're all gonna be reading about it pretty soon.
But this is HN and the people here are smart but lack the intellectual courage and honesty to challenge their beliefs, so they'll believe in things like "SEC trying to save the common investor" despite obvious examples like 2008, FTX, etc.
They apply the same reasoning to war for example, they'll never talk about how comparable the US aggression on Iraq is to the Russian aggression on Ukraine, and will call you a Russian sympathiser if you point this out.
This is expected and completely natural, humans will always find reasons why their actions are good and general just ways to explain their behavior, I think there are experiments that even show it on the biological level when they cut off the right from the left hemisphere.
The SEC's attack on Binance and CB has been part of a multi year attack on cryptocurrencies, everyone here will criticize crypto really hard but never the fact the fed printed huge amounts of USD, causing inflation not only for US citizens but for every country that relies on the US for food and other imports (that are done in USD, so for example country X's reserve in USD is worth less now, and US exporters raise their prices, etc.)
The people here will go to extreme lengths of mental gymnastics to say that the inflation wasn't caused at all by money printing but by covid disrupting the supply chain and by the Russian war.
In the SBF case by the time anyone realizes what was happening the money was "gone."
Trying to reply why it will be that easy in this case perhaps. N.B. they were just granted an order; they need now to enforce it. That's a different "craziness."
The SEC is sending a message that the days of crypto exchanges being largely unregulated are over, and they're probably doing that because of how badly they screwed up with FTX, not in spite of it.
Agreed. SEC should have given enough time to these two so that they could fleece people of their money, then declare themselves bankrupt and then have law enforcement go to other countries and have the culprits extradicted back. Finally have everyone shouting "SEC colluded with these culprits".
I don't understand this rush to stop this from happening.
And Binance appears to be on the hook for various forms of fraud.
Maybe they did never steal a cent from anyone, but there are more crimes than theft on the books.
Just because to the best of our knowledge, Binance is fully solvent and can make all US depositors whole, doesn't mean that they won't declare bankruptcy imminently. That's a condition that could change at any time, as has been well demonstrated.
I have a feeling Binance would also look a lot more like a ponzi scheme under subpoena with their asset values gone to zero, no?
There are dozens of crypto exchanges, and most of the major ones have not become insolvent. FTX and MtGox are the only major ones to become insolvent and lose user funds. The top ones like Kraken and Coinbase and Binance have been operating without issue for many years.
FTX was headquartered in the Bahamas for a reason. The SEC doesn't have jurisdiction over the Bahamas. It also takes time to build a case, which is difficult when FTX exploded and then collapsed so quickly.
Binance.US and Coinbase both operate in the US, under the SEC's jurisdiction.