I don't think any exchange is too big to fail. Binance is one of those companies that looks like it has risky enough products that they'd end up closing down parts of the page and liquidating user funds to cover other bits (earn, futures and margin would probably be the most at risk of this type of thing - in that order).

Binance could also face problems ftx did such as hacks and poorly managed investments (we've seen the second one already but not to a huge extent - they don't back many popular collateralised tokens though which might protect them from some things that companies like ftx and coinbase might have been more vulnerable to).

I've held quite a bit in the past to do defi stuff. I've not held any for over 6 months though (because of the drop in prices) but I think it's probably the main reason wbtc was/js used and had/has a high market cap.

It might be premature to say it won't be collateralised enough to return the peg but it will probably need a 1:1 buyback now to survive.

Dex is the present too - it works much better than it used to but peer to peer alternatives have been around since 2013 at least.

I hope this reliance on crypto exchanges is short lived. I'd expect a lot of people holding crypto on ftx are greatly reconsidering what they did now and trying to work out how to move past it if some had a lot/majority of funds on there (even as bankruptcy proceedings go though).

Do you remember what happened to bitmex a few years ago (2019)? Their customer relations manager resigned (I think) by sending an email to everyone in the mailing list with their newsletter in a way they could all see each others' email addresses: https://blog.bitmex.com/email-privacy-issue-what-is-happening-and-how-can-we-help/

If their mailing providers are hacked, I wouldn't be surprised at this point though - it seems to be a target for attackers (especially customer support).

Are there any logs available with your my ode instance? I'm not familiar with running electrum servers but it might help someone who is if you have any extra information. Is your node fully synced with the blockchain too?

According to Reuters (I read the article a few hours ago): ftx us is financially unaffected by the investments. If there's enough funds to cover withdrawals in the Bahamas, there's a chance nothing will happen to him (arrest or prosecution wise) - the article I'd want to reference has since been shortened, it was very long and the parts of where ftx still has liquidity and where it doesn't don't seem to be mentioned.

I kinda think he offered for the company to take on those risky holdings to bolster cryptos position and help keep them liquid, if so then it might be considered philanthropic and become hard for a judge to actually prosecute - especially if there was a strategy behind taking those holdings and selling them on fairly quickly which might be something that gets done or would've been soon on the original trajectory (in only a year or two).

Not sure if there's already discussions on things like this but I constantly find I'm left with unanswered questions when reading crypto related media, often news articles (and some of my questions never get answered).

I've been thinking this about the ftx hack fund issues and have been wondering if there's a good place a lot of people use to get accurate and quick information about breaking news and information that comes quickly? Are places like Twitter good for this? I've seen it be used and is quite useful for cyber vulnerabilities where people post threads with 15+ tweets that are concise enough to cover most things.

Before my issues with not finding the full answers on what happened with ftx, I had a similar problem with taproot where I had to look up how it functioned multiple times before it finally clicked (and that was a case of it making sense how it worked by the sites I found but then they didn't have any examples of it and left it being explained in an abstract way - has anyone found a solution to this or do we just have to wait on it or become the solution)?

Claiming that Europe doesn't have stances to protect its own industry is quite wrong too. I'm.not sure there's any vital industry Europe as a whole couldn't produce something workable for (Italy has a plane making company, 2D planes are probably easier to make).

The size of companies and the revenues of ones such as fiat, VW and Toyota are huge but they don't seem to have much in terms of expansion and capital gains compared with the same types of companies in the US. (Toyota recently blew money away on flying cars).

What I think has happened here is that this sort of legislation might have been introduced to curve the chance European cars become cheaper if the EU keeps being unstable, or drops further if Russia managed to advance into the EU. This wouldn't explain why Japan has concerns though as the Yen normally behaves in a disproportional way in relation to the Eurozone.

Just move to somewhere with good support. I've not needed to contact them for anything but coinbase seems to be one of the best options out there. UK banks don't really like crypto though so you might be better off going via a direct bank transfer to coinbase pro.

Does this mean binance have screwed themselves over by another investment considering they were planning to keep selling ftt and I doubt they dumped all their coins on the market by this time.

It looks like FTX has gone the same as Mt gox but slightly different. I thought Mt gox was a group of people interested in crypto that built an exchange, and ftx was people interested in trading products and derivatives associated with crypto.

I'm still confused as to the full extent of what went on here (though I've seen rumours of attempts to borrow funds to pump coins and prop up other schemes - or directly lend to them). There was news on Tuesday of a lot of resignations, I wonder if there was an initial whistle-blower that caused the collapse or if it was just a hunch.

When you pair (connect) your trezor with the wallet you see on screen it sends across a master public key which can be used to derive all of your addresses and your computer wallet software connects to a server and queries that public key with them to see what balance you have - this is frequently refreshed too.

If you want to send funds the only thing your trezor needs is the address you want to send to and the unspent transaction outputs you want to spend (they're just the txid you received the amount from plus the index the amount your private key controls is - all that can be seen on the blockchain is your address).

If you want to receive funds, a query is made to the trezor device to display your address and that's it.

Most public information is stored on your computer with the wallet software, the hardware wallet "just" has keys for signing everything and some verification/utility software to make it function (such as pin processing).

If you've got a good strategy behind it then it's not a bad idea. Flash crashes can cause problems though if you're poorly collateralised but if you understand what you're doing pretty well you can weather it (also being over 40% debt to assets is definitely a bad thing but still bad if you're investing the extra funds elsewhere).

The additional problem with doing this is holding the borrowed coins in a way they're protected and can still be used. You're just throwing money away if you don't have instant access to them and a crash occurs.

Fully collateralised defi alternatives are a great investment. Defi alternatives that aren't collateralised well are probably worse than exchanges - look at what's happened to Luna.

If you've not got a good (and RELIABLE) investment lined up for the money or don't need the cash then it's probably a bad idea.

Bitfinex? Can't remember if there was anyone else doing the same thing but I cna imagine some in the background have faced bigger funding and liquidity problems than they've reported (including Binance).

[quote author=The Pharmacist link=topic=5420084.msg61267463#msg61267463 date=1668049400
As far as the "don't use a token you created as collateral" statement goes, I don't know whether to agree or disagree with that, because I don't think it matters so much who created a token used as collateral as it does the token's volatility and/or potential to drop like a stone if put under enough pressure.  And frankly, using anything other than a stablecoin as collateral is extremely risky.  Even bitcoin is notoriously volatile, and just look at what would have happened had you used it to secure a loan last month or even last week.  Yikes.
[/quote]

I thought binance had a buyback system in place with their token too so this might have lead to a similar problem anyway (not sure if this is just rumours though or if they've changed their mind on propping up their own token - a lot of people used to see that token as a direct investment in binance too).

Edit: looks like they were just randomly buying back tokens.

If your coins indeed were safe with exchanges, why have all suspended withdrawals (for 24 hours plus) due to unscheduled maintenance (I'm not sure about coinbase but I remember binance having a 48 hour one - some exchanges have been known to start manually confirming withdrawals too which doesn't make sense - if it was because you expected some accounts could cheat, why wouldn't you just tell them specifically and not affect everyone else). I'd expect any problem exchange side to be fixed within 2 hours or for them to have a float (/hot wallet) of funds they can still use to process withdrawals and don't mine losing in case a vulnerability persists.

The main reason exchanges have closed so far is due to mismanagement of funds, don't trust when there's no reason to. It might not take many conspiring individuals to completely empty an exchanges wallet in future too.

Do you have any idea where you made them? You could try using electrum (from electrum.org) but you might need to get a script using bitcoinj if you find they're bip39 nmemonics and not electrum's native phrases (you can use electrum to import bip39 wallets but bitcoinj would be a lot faster imo for the amount of wallets you need to import).

You could also use online tools to convert a nmemonic into an xpub which you can then put into a block explorer. One example of this is https://iancoleman.io/bip39/ but it's risky to use it online. (download a copy of the site and go offline and generate the 1k xpubs if you go that way before coming back online after closing the site).

Are your solicitors not acting as an intermediary too? Surely the buyer can't trace it easily if it goes through a payment processor the solicitors deal with.

Mixers and multisig are the best ways to do these sorts of things depending on your level of safety and saleability. If you want to sell them soon, a mixer might not be a good option but using one for a longer term situation (especially if you can make it harder to detect - such as by using exchanges). I wouldn't move the entire funds at once either, just a few % at a time (maybe 3) - there's unlikely a problem but if there is you're not risking much.

Moving onto a multisig I think you'd be best making something like a 2 of 3 one (as an example) and securely storing 2 hardware devices somewhere (they could be with you and just well hidden or they could be stored in secured storage but these might carry their own security risks). If you're in a country that might have a corrupted policing system, putting both hardware wallets in other more secure countries might be the best alternative too. 

I'd guess making it illegal just makes it harder to track (for the authorities in particular) that's the same with a lot of things and is why banning crypto won't work out the way governments actually expect.

I think defi does offer an interesting banking opportunity to users in poorer countries to earn an interest on usd (from what I've read, any that allow you to store usd in banks don't normally pay any interest because it still pays higher than the native currency plus interest).

They probably don't need a high circulating supply either if shops off load their crypto fast enough (which they might do if there's a demand for it or they have investments/stock to buy).

You can search for answers on a search engine like Google or duckduckgo to see if it's already been asked/answered before.

A lot of the time when people make those sorts of posts, they should direct you to the original thread where it was discussed - if they don't, I'd recommend reporting that post as spam unless they actually give you an answer.

It's not wrong to open topics to ask questions that have been asked before (especially if the last thread on it was made years ago and something might have changed or if you can't find any answers from a quick search - if the first three non ad links don't have an answer, ask here or if they don't have a quick answer).

Also: This has been asked before .

Have they even released anything from their metaverse project? I think a lot of big companies have these sorts of projects just to stay in the news and attract investors, much like their attempts at libra.

I think news like this is actually bad for tech firms as it does show they're making cutbacks to deal with a potential recession but it also shows they can't weather the storm and react to economic conditions as they arise (if they don't have a few years worth of funding to pay salaries - probably the cheapest part of the business - where is that money going to go? Are they just going to wait and be innovative in 3 to 5 years when everything's bullish again.

Elliott waves have been proven not to work from when I last checked the literature on it. They do make up a support and resistance style model though, if you're loosely betting on the waves you'll probably do OK. The issue with the 1-3-5 stuff is that I've seen 1-3-5-7-9 on the 15m timeframe become 1-3-5 on the 1h timeframe (and a lot of the time things don't work out between them properly either, like half a wave that falls or something that stunts the wave - especially for larger moves that could mean your resistance/support line falls below/above your entry).