Proof of reserves? Insurance fund? Best I can do is a random number generator!

[o_e_l_e_o]

If you've not been following the FTX trial, you really should, because the level of fraud on display is enough to even rival that of CSW. Here are two snippets of code (pictures courtesy of https://nitter.cz/molly0xFFF) which have been submitted as evidence in the trial. This code is regarding FTX's insurance fund which was widely publicized:

   

The first picture above shows how the value of 5,250,000 FTX Token supposedly in the insurance fund was "calculated". It wasn't. It was just coded in. insuranceFund.size = 5250000 FTT.

The second picture above shows how the value of USD in the insurance fund was "calculated". The daily trading volume on FTX was multiplied by a random number, and this was used to adjust the insurance fund to a new size.

This is the kind of bullshit centralized exchanges are using in their "proof of reserves", "safu funds", "insurance funds", "collateral funds", "1-to-1 matching reports", and all the other trash they peddle to convince you your funds are totally safe. Literal random number generators. They will do and say anything to get you to hand over your coins to them. Don't fall it.

[1714237773]

1714237773

[1714237773]

1714237773

[1714237773]

1714237773

[1714237773]

1714237773

[nelson4lov]

This is definitely not shocking to me. It's very obvious now that centralized exchanges / service providers will do anything just to trick users to patronize their services. If FTX went as far as publishing insurance numbers out of thing air with no actual asset to back it up, I'm convinced that some CEX available today still indulge in those practice.

In response to FTX collapse, tons of exchanges rushed to start providing proof of reserves. The way it works is that they simply publish some numbers at specific intervals - they leave no way to verify but want users to trust them.

 "Here's the numbers: trust us, we already verified the numbers so you don't have to. "

 

[stompix]

And we're surprised about this because....it's exactly the one million time or ten million when it happens or some other round number?  
But I don't get something, is this about two different funds because, and I'm quoting you just to make things easy:

The first picture above shows how the value of 5,250,000 FTX Token supposedly in the insurance fund was "calculated". It wasn't. It was just coded in. insuranceFund.size = 5250000 FTT.

So the number of coins in this one is fixed, and varies according to value of FTX tokens, right?

The second picture above shows how the value of USD in the insurance fund was "calculated". The daily trading volume on FTX was multiplied by a random number, and this was used to adjust the insurance fund to a new size.

This one is variable to volume...
Were there two insurance funds?

This is the kind of bullshit centralized exchanges are using in their "proof of reserves", "safu funds", "insurance funds", "collateral funds", "1-to-1 matching reports", and all the other trash they peddle to convince you your funds are totally safe. Literal random number generators. They will do and say anything to get you to hand over your coins to them. Don't fall it.

But , but , but, CZ said #SAFU, CZ helped millions make money, CZ is great, ...CZ is whatever god your timezone has!
Are you spreading FUD here?  

[o_e_l_e_o]

Were there two insurance funds?

One fund, multiple assets:

[Helena Yu]

I don't think there's a centralized exchange is being honest with everything they have e.g. their total funds, the reserved funds for SAFU etc, most of them either using random number or exclude/include anything they want in order to make the number looks good (they will use * mark).

I couldn't image if Binance is bankrupt, how bad is the chaos affecting Bitcoin holder since most of people hold their funds in Binance.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

One fund, multiple assets:

The screenshot is interesting so can I use it to discuss about stable coins too?

Stable coins must be backed by fiat currencies like the US. dollar. If they are backed by volatile assets like gold, Bitcoin, Ethereum, altcoins, they might lose their pegs anytime. Attacks from whales and market markers can kill stable coin pegs very quickly. A massive crash of Terra and its algorithmic stable coin is example of bad managed treasury can be easily attacked and broken down.

[Shishir99]

I couldn't image if Binance is bankrupt, how bad is the chaos affecting Bitcoin holder since most of people hold their funds in Binance.

Then just try to imagine how badly it will affect the market if Binance runs away or some authorities shut them down. Remember how it affected the market during the Terra Luna crash? How volatile the market was? Binance has over 800K Bitcoins in their control which they claim as proof of reserves. Their other wallets got millions of Bitcoins which is not their funds. Those funds are user funds. Imagine you woke up and saw Binance was shut down for some reason and the market kept dumping. That will be great chaos in the crypto market. People making this exchange more and more powerful by using their service without understanding the risk. There is nothing we can do if they start manipulating the market.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

This is the kind of bullshit centralized exchanges are using in their "proof of reserves", "safu funds", "insurance funds", "collateral funds", "1-to-1 matching reports", and all the other trash they peddle to convince you your funds are totally safe. Literal random number generators. They will do and say anything to get you to hand over your coins to them. Don't fall it.

I'm not surprised with this development, centralized services will do anything to look trustworthy in the eyes of their customers but we know all they're doing is just marketing and don't actually care about their customers. Proof of reserve my foot, the only time I'll believe a centralized exchange has a proof of reserve is when their reserve/insurance fund are in Bitcoin and held in a multisign offline wallet which they'll sign a message including the Bitcoin address which can be verified by everyone and we monitor the address constantly.

Without that anything they say isn't worth believing. Moreover why would they hold insurance funds in their native token. Obviously they're doing so for them to easily manipulate the price (of funds said to be in reserved). No centralized exchange should be trusted irrespective of how big they're. They're here to make money and they'll lie, deceive everyone until they finally get exposed and exit scam just as FTX did.

For newbies that'll come across this thread, if you still have coins on exchanges, get them off right away. Exchanges aren't wallet to store your coins with them and don't believe whatever excuse they'll give to make you believe they'll look after your coins. Take the security of your coins as your personal business and store them offline in a hardware wallet.

[Z-tight]

I couldn't image if Binance is bankrupt, how bad is the chaos affecting Bitcoin holder since most of people hold their funds in Binance.

People who still hold their funds in Binance are either ignorant, not aware of the recent events regarding centralized exchanges & lending and earning platforms or they think Binance is too big to fail. If Binance bites the dust they'll be the ones affected and a million other holders of shitcoins, the BTC network will be just fine with or without Binance.

Stable coins must be backed by fiat currencies like the US. dollar. If they are backed by volatile assets like gold, Bitcoin, Ethereum, altcoins, they might lose their pegs anytime. Attacks from whales and market markers can kill stable coin pegs very quickly. A massive crash of Terra and its algorithmic stable coin is example of bad managed treasury can be easily attacked and broken down.

Many of these stable coins in the market are backed by nothing but thin air, people who think stable coins are backed 1:1 and that is why they hold them for a long time are joking, they print many of them out of thin air and your money may even be lost when you still have your stable coins in your wallet, not to even add that they can freeze your coins in any wallet it is held.

Then just try to imagine how badly it will affect the market if Binance runs away or some authorities shut them down.

A large number of shitcoins expunged from the market-> BTC drops in price temporarily, but the network remains exactly the same-> Thousands of people learn a valuable lesson in self custody, and that funds are only safu when they have their keys.

[Lucius]

CEX is here for profit and nothing more, so everything they say should be taken with a grain of salt. When we add someone like Bankman to that, then the whole thing looks even more tragic considering his real competence to run such a company. What these people are really good at is creating worthless tokens, and that's something they have in common when it comes to selling their nonsensical ideas to anyone naive enough to believe in them.

It really amazes me that such a company could even do business in the US, because what we are seeing now, someone should have noticed and reacted earlier and prevented everything from going to hell. How realistic is it that no one knew about all these illogicalities within FTX until it was too late, isn't there someone who oversees such things?

[Die_empty]

I'm not surprised with this development, centralized services will do anything to look trustworthy in the eyes of their customers but we know all they're doing is just marketing and don't actually care about their customers. Proof of reserve my foot, the only time I'll believe a centralized exchange has a proof of reserve is when their reserve/insurance fund are in Bitcoin and held in a multisign offline wallet which they'll sign a message including the Bitcoin address which can be verified by everyone and we monitor the address constantly.

I think you have a good point here because these centralized platforms can always provide fake proof of reserve. They can get funds from somewhere else into their business, conduct audits, and publish a healthy financial report. They will later pull out the funds which they borrowed to balance their account.

An example is crypto.com which withdrew about 280,000 ether ($400m) from its account after publishing its PoR audit report. The funds was transfered to Gate.io's address fueling speculations that the funds was just borrowed to deceive their customers. Most of these firms show only assets without a comprehensive breakdown of their liability. So having a verifiable and constantly monitored wallet would be a good way to start. But even with this, they can still scam thier customers.

[Ruttoshi]

It is so sad to see that exchanges foundations are built on lies just to make people feel that they their funds are safe in their exchanges. It means that centralized exchanges are out here to scam customers of their funds but pretends as if they have the safety of customers funds as their priority.

They claim to have SAFU funds which the numbers are not through because they know that customers will not bother, if it is true of not. They gain customers trust with lies and this shows that they can come up anytime with an Exit scams. One needs not to ever leave a penny in a centralized exchange and also advice whoever that leaves their funds in Cex that it is not safe and that they are manipulators.

I pity for individuals and institutions who finds it difficult to keep their funds in their self custody but needs exchanges to keep their coins for them, because they will be the victim if the exchange crashes, many of them should have learnt their lessons from FTX crash but they are still ignorant of it.

[Plaguedeath]

As long as the owner didn't sign a message, I never believe with any number appeared in the site or claimed were belong to them. Actually they need to do that at the same time when they release their financial statement e.g. once a year or every quarter.

It's really dumb if someone can trust someone words without validating it, just like a popular phrase in Bitcoin "don't trust, verify".

[o_e_l_e_o]

I couldn't image if Binance is bankrupt, how bad is the chaos affecting Bitcoin holder since most of people hold their funds in Binance.

Binance have already been caught running a fractional reserve system and not holding enough coins to cover all withdrawals: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5441480.msg62531977#msg62531977.

Proof of reserve my foot, the only time I'll believe a centralized exchange has a proof of reserve is when their reserve/insurance fund are in Bitcoin and held in a multisign offline wallet which they'll sign a message including the Bitcoin address which can be verified by everyone and we monitor the address constantly.

Even then, it proves nothing. So let's say Binance "prove" they have 500,000 BTC. How do we know that is everything they are supposed to have? How do we know that covers all customer deposits to Binance? We don't. It doesn't matter if they prove they are holding 500,000 BTC, if collectively all Binance users should be able to withdraw 750,000 BTC. Proof of reserves without proof of assets is meaningless.

Various exchanges have tried to do proof of assets as well, but it is completely trivial to fool by just having a handful of accounts with negative balances, which is exactly what FTX were doing as well. Alameda's account on FTX had a balance of negative $8 billion.

An example is crypto.com which withdrew about 280,000 ether ($400m) from its account after publishing its PoR audit report. The funds was transfered to Gate.io's address fueling speculations that the funds was just borrowed to deceive their customers.

Binance did the same, with a few billion in USDT being moved out the day after their so-called "audits". And the same thing again with Bitfinex propping up Tether just before their "audits". Every centralized exchange is the same.

[pinggoki]

I have a bit of knowledge in programming so I giggled a bit, they just did a complicated print command. Seriously though, I am scared right now for my bitcoins because they're not in a non-custodial wallet and I think that this will be the final straw, I'll be contacting someone.

[retreat]

It is predictable that centralized exchanges like FTX employ manipulative business practices. They are a business and all they think about is how to make a profit without needing to think about their users. I think that it is not just FTX, certainly other centralized exchanges carry out manipulative practices like this and because they are still operating it is not visible to external parties.

[buwaytress]

Nice find, but I'm not surprised at all by the audacity of these wealthy suits and ties. I'd actually be offended if they didn't meet my low expectations of them.

You give them too much credit, they at least would have shown a tinier bit more effort if they actually ran a code to randomise some arbitrary number in a less arbitrary range...

You know those print cmd stries are a staple of memelogy, you don't know they're used at the highest level.

[aylabadia05]

It is predictable that centralized exchanges like FTX employ manipulative business practices. They are a business and all they think about is how to make a profit without needing to think about their users. I think that it is not just FTX, certainly other centralized exchanges carry out manipulative practices like this and because they are still operating it is not visible to external parties.

o_e_l_e_o shows an image to reinforce that holding funds on an exchange is not a solution. The image displayed here belongs to FTX, it cannot be denied that other exchanges can also be like that.

You, I and most of the others probably don't have the advantage regarding programming knowledge and don't really know the language of each code that appears as in the image that appears above so we can assume that a large exchange like Binance doesn't make us afraid to save funds. on the exchange, but people who have knowledge of programming when they see this feel afraid of the coins that have been stored on the exchange.

Regardless, the business practices carried out by exchanges such as FTX or other exchanges are manipulative. Basically, exchanges cannot be trusted to store money.

[Frankolala]

I am not surprised to hear this, because some other people have also seen it that exchanges goes as far as borrowing funds before audit and return the funds after audit to deceive people that they have enough prove of reserve.

Binance last audit was not accepted by people because they said there is no transparency in their PoR. If Binance the biggest exchange can do this then other smaller exchanges will learn and copy from them.
https://www.ccn.com/news/binance-proof-of-reserves-transparency-not-enough/#:~:text=In%20the%20latest%20snapshot%20%2C%20Binance,users%20hold%20in%20their%20accounts

[Hamza2424]

This is the kind of bullshit centralized exchanges are using in their "proof of reserves", "safu funds", "insurance funds", "collateral funds", "1-to-1 matching reports", and all the other trash they peddle to convince you your funds are totally safe. Literal random number generators. They will do and say anything to get you to hand over your coins to them. Don't fall it.

I was expected to see such sort of bullshit by the centralized platforms but I wasn't expecting it to be the same in the case with the reputed ones anyhow they completely lost it years ago.

They just mean bussnies at any cost, I'm sure such sort of shity approach is gonna slip out from the other top exchanges as well, simply they can do anything in their territory which is close sources. CZ is smart but in the current timeline, Biannce seems to be the second most suspicious one doing this but somehow they are surviving. But I took exit a long time ago.

 ☑ Mt. Gox (2014)
 ☑ Bitfinex (2016):
 ☑ QuadrigaCX (2019)

#not_your_key_not_your_coins

Binance last audit was not accepted by people because they said there is no transparency in their PoR.

Crypto exchanges need transparency, as opacity is as outdated as beepers and dial-up internet.