Crypto exchange wars going on... FTX vs Binance

[adaseb]

No idea if you were following the news this past week but a report on Coindesk about a leaked FTX / Alameda balance sheet showing solvecy risks. Basically something how most assets held by FTX are in FTT which is their native token and its considered highly illiquid.

There was a sell off this weekend and the sell-off got worst when Binance CEO tweeted that they are liquidating all their FTT holdings. Then some FTX staff tried to provide some confidence by tweeting that they have tons of other assets and are willing to buy all the Binance's holding of FTT at a fixed price of $22.

Now there is massive panic and seems there is a bank run on all the assets held at FTX. If you look at their wallets, you can see people are withdrawing everything. Their USDC wallet keeps getting depleted and they need to keep topping it up.

Don't like the way this is going. Crypto exchange wars are not going to be good for crypto. Just like those hashrate wars back in 2018 when the $6K support broke when BSV was against BCH.

[1714596187]

1714596187

[1714596187]

1714596187

[Vaskiy]

According to coinmarketcap data, FTX Exchange have reached the second position next to Binance in trading volume. Though the difference is high, Binance wants to keep the market under their control. Maybe for that reason such an issue is being arose by Binance. This shows that the competence among the Exchanges is at the peak. Maybe similar incidents will bring to limelight more fake volume and other tactics followed by the Exchanges to keep their markets stable amidst different Market situation.

[adaseb]

Massive amounts of withdraws today.

Look at their USDC wallet

https://etherscan.io/token/0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48?a=0x2faf487a4414fe77e2327f0bf4ae2a264a776ad2

Look at their USDT wallet

https://etherscan.io/token/0xdac17f958d2ee523a2206206994597c13d831ec7?a=0x2faf487a4414fe77e2327f0bf4ae2a264a776ad2


Massive amounts of funds being withdrawn. They I think request USDC from Circle and a few minutes later its depleted and they need to issue more USDC. Rumor has it that they upped the withdraw fee to $100 per ERC20 withdraw.

This is giving me November 2018 vibes with Craig Wright and Roger Ver conflict which caused that nasty crash of $6K. That day was Nov 14th. Basically almost 4 years ago today.

[mk4]

For those interested with this 'drama', some Twitter accounts to watch:

https://twitter.com/carolinecapital/status/1589287457975304193
https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1589374530413215744
https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1589399420487208960

[Pierre 2]

I feel like pointing out LUNA and talking in dramatic way about things don't work. I understand CZ wanna stay as main player in crypto but yet he could just come up and say he wants Binance to stay #1  in exchange list and he will do anything necessary to protect its position. I feel like this will definitely influence Bitcoin badly. Pretty sure decrease in price was sort of caused by this indirectly. They should make up their minds.

[DudeAtWork420]

When a market has lots of strong competitors it stays health. If one exchange rules them all it will not be good for the industry. After seeing what CZ done to FTX i can not imagine what more he could do to other exchanges. He is very cleaver and destroying his rival one by one. People is in panic mode so its obvious they will withdraw all of their funds but it seems FTX failed to show enough response to cool down everything.

[adaseb]

Been watching those hot wallets for the past 24 hours and it seems they are processing probably over $1B worth of withdraws so far and they still haven't ran out of funds. Their hot wallet is almost 50% empty however they moved alot of funds around to refill their other wallets for USDC, USDT, so I am guessing that maybe >75% of all their client assets have been withdrawn.

Wondering if they will recover from this. This was the top #2 or #3 exchange in terms of volume and I predict it will be closer to #10 spot after this. I think people don't want another Celcius issue.

[OgNasty]

CZ has gone out of his way to take the time to specifically tweet that this is not a war between exchanges. He’s learned his lesson with the Alina debacle and is seeing cracks in FTX that make him not want to have half a billion dollars invested in FTT. Totally reasonable and in no may malicious in my opinion to not want this liability. If you dig deeper there are lots of other explanations, but I think the simplest explanation is that this was a no brainer move to shore up your Binance’s balance sheet and remove potential sources of future problems.

[adaseb]

From what I understand. Apparently they use FTT as collateral on many different exchanges and Defi. The reason they don't sell FTT but use as collateral is so they don't pay capital gains tax on the tokens.

So they borrow it from FTX, use a collateral to market make and such.

Hence it seems that they might have $5B in liabilities for Alameda but $5B in assets for FTX, so it cancels each other out. Another issue is that it seems that FTT is owned 98% by Alameda pretty much. Many only own 25 FTT just to get the free maker fees on FTX but majority is owned by them.

So far they are still processing withdraws. Maybe $50M per hour or so.

[bbc.reporter]

For those interested with this 'drama', some Twitter accounts to watch:

https://twitter.com/carolinecapital/status/1589287457975304193
https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1589374530413215744
https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1589399420487208960

The drama might have begun when Giselle Bundchen divorced Tom Brady hehehehe. If speculations that FTX is insolvent are true then this divorce will start to make much more sense hehehe. It might be the husband who convinced the wife to invest much of their savings in FTX hehehehe.

Tom and Giselle have taken equity stake in FTX during 2021. This investment might be very big because they have entered the investment after FTX has received a funding round for venture capitalists and valued in more than $1 billion already.



Celebrity couple Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen have taken an equity stake in crypto firm FTX as part of a long-term partnership, marking the duo’s newest foray into the world of digital assets.

Source https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-29/tom-brady-gisele-b-ndchen-take-equity-stake-in-crypto-firm-ftx

[GonnaGrinditout]

My understanding of the situation:
FTX lobbied for a DEFI kyc requirement > looks like those crypto players in power in return want to shut them down and seem successful so far. FTX/Almeda inflated their balance sheet with their own tokens, going to be interesting weeks.

[adaseb]

My understanding of the situation:
FTX lobbied for a DEFI kyc requirement > looks like those crypto players in power in return want to shut them down and seem successful so far. FTX/Almeda inflated their balance sheet with their own tokens, going to be interesting weeks.

Yes this is the reason. Nobody in the crypto space was happy about what SBF did.

However CZ looks like he is looking for blood. Instead of just taking the $22 offer for the FTT, he promised to TWAP it over a 6 month period. However if you look at the FTTBNB chart, there is massive amount of dumping since in the last few hours. Seems like he wants to break the peg and cause pain.

There is speculation already that they are selling their holdings of SOL just to keep the $22 peg safe.

Right now there is even a 10 cent premium between Binance and FTX for FTT-Token.

Looks like it might get ugly. Reminds me of CSW vs Ver from 4 years ago. And poof the $6000 bitcoin support broke.

[Fundamentals Of]

This is just the dirty side of Sam Bankman-Fried and Changpeng Zhao's competition. It is clear the competition of the two is rather close. It's just not interesting for them to treat each other to the level of an enemy when in fact they're sharing the same industry space. Their competition now is not healthy anymore. Rather than becoming better than the other, it seems they are already trying to kill the other. Of course I'm only referring to their businesses.

But the bigger problem here is that rather than one turning out the winner and the other loser, what will possibly happen is that the market will be affected and we will all losers.

[adaseb]

The FTT $22 peg just broke and all hell's gone lose.

They are sucking the liquidity out of BTCUSD and ETHUSD also. Site is lagging like crazy and can't navigate it.

This peg breaking is similar to the $6000 peg that broke back on November 14 2018.

[philipma1957]

For those interested with this 'drama', some Twitter accounts to watch:

https://twitter.com/carolinecapital/status/1589287457975304193
https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1589374530413215744
https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1589399420487208960

The drama might have begun when Giselle Bundchen divorced Tom Brady hehehehe. If speculations that FTX is insolvent are true then this divorce will start to make much more sense hehehe. It might be the husband who convinced the wife to invest much of their savings in FTX hehehehe.

Tom and Giselle have taken equity stake in FTX during 2021. This investment might be very big because they have entered the investment after FTX has received a funding round for venture capitalists and valued in more than $1 billion already.



Celebrity couple Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen have taken an equity stake in crypto firm FTX as part of a long-term partnership, marking the duo’s newest foray into the world of digital assets.

Source https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-29/tom-brady-gisele-b-ndchen-take-equity-stake-in-crypto-firm-ftx

nice I would love to see them drop 100 million or more fuck them.

I am sitting with a pile of cash on coinbase but do not see many bargains on the major coins .

LTC
Dog
BTC

all are solid enough .

[mk4]

nice I would love to see them drop 100 million or more fuck them.

I am sitting with a pile of cash on coinbase but do not see many bargains on the major coins .

LTC
Dog
BTC

all are solid enough .

Lol markets are still continuing to giga-nuke as we speak, like this is some 3 Arrows Capital cascading liquidations type of event. Personally looking at SOL as it's pretty much collateral damage from the FTT fiasco.

[tabas]

The FTT $22 peg just broke and all hell's gone lose.

And it's down to $15 a few hours ago but $17 now.

nice I would love to see them drop 100 million or more fuck them.

I am sitting with a pile of cash on coinbase but do not see many bargains on the major coins .

LTC
Dog
BTC

all are solid enough .

I've got a few stable coins prepared to buy some and I already did purchased the first batch of it just like a random purchase. Just like you, I don't see many bargain yet and this could still go on further. Most traders are active now and tuning in for this opportunity as of the moment. I might not catch the lowest for other coins as a collateral of this incident but hopefully to pick a lot during its shown dip.

[stompix]

Oh, the two "saviours" fo the crypto economy, the ones that have done sooooo much for adoption, that have helped millions earnign a few cents with their exchanges are now damaging the whole system more than ever.

For years I've been telling that those two are one of the most toxic persons in this, both full of lies and manipulating everything, but the masses are in just for the money, Binance and FTX throwing a few free $ in some shitty token and everyone is kneeling and praying to them, and now we get the bill for these, allowing some to grow and become more powerful than it should have never been normal in a decentralized economy.

Little by little, month after month this is morphinginto the traditional stock /banking system we're so used to, with the same forex attacks with the same insolvency with the same fractional reserves, everyone blames Soros for his fx manipulation and crash of the pound, will CZ get the same treatment if he bankrupts a competitor? No way! He just has to print some BNB, make a giveaway and all your funds are SAFU with him safekeeping them, but only him, not somebody else..

[adaseb]

As of 3 hours... withdraws have stopped.

Only deposits are going to their hot wallet and nothing coming out. No idea how their bitcoin hot wallet is doing but their hot wallet for ETH and ERC20 is not sending any withdraws.

[GreatArkansas]

As of 3 hours... withdraws have stopped.

Only deposits are going to their hot wallet and nothing coming out. No idea how their bitcoin hot wallet is doing but their hot wallet for ETH and ERC20 is not sending any withdraws.

A few hours ago I was able to withdraw USDT using the TRON network from FTX to my Binance account and it is very good, I withdraw because I need it, just like my normal transactions without any reason about the current issue on FTX exchange.
I believe that Sam Bankman-Fried is right, this is because of competitors, they are being targetted by their competitors.