Most of this Binance FUD is baseless and silly. Everyone should always self custody bitcoin or any coins they're not trading with but don't be naive that there aren't people with ill intentions right now

Some personal observations and trying to establish some facts around Binance FUD, a lot of which is deliberately misleading either due to not being well informed or malice. SBF's official paid spokesperson Kevin O'Leary seems to be behind most of it.

24 hours before SBF arrest, the Block and Wall Street Journal rehashed an old 2018 investigation into Binance out of the blue at the exact same time. Reuters then ran with it too but at least made sure to clarify the investigation is from 2018 and nothing new.

The investigation concerns Iranian firms using Binance. Kraken was also accused of it recently. Just last month, Binance's compliance team froze Iranian assets and blocked concerned accounts for violation of US sanctions. These restrictions around US sanctions only apply to Binance US.

Few days ago, an article was shared here from CNBC titled 'Binance suspended withdrawals for USDC', but the article didn't at all mention that Binance autoconverts all USDC to BUSD since September. There was also a scheduled maintenance which Binance already notified users of over a week ago. Publications without ulterior motives can also be misleading if journalists aren't responsible enough to research thoroughly what they're writing about.

Again in a CNBC interview yesterday, the hosts brought it up not knowing how stablecoins work. Mainstream journalists don't seem to know that unlike legacy fractional reserve system, assets are required to be backed 1:1 by crypto exchanges and there are no bailouts in bitcoin. After writing puff pieces, coddling SBF and destroying their reputations, they're now blindly assuming every exchange is like FTX blowing away customer funds.

The swap functionality from BUSD to USDC requires banking hours. Every properly managed stablecoin has its reserves in the legacy system in tradfi instruments dependent on legacy rails which is only operational 9 to 5 on business days. Since Binance autoconverts to BUSD and still allows USDC withdrawals, redeeming BUSD back to cash and then minting USDC needs legacy rails. USDC withdrawals got restored as soon as banks opened.

It would be easier for Binance not to support competitor's stablecoin USDC at all. You can't withdraw BUSD on Coinbase. Nobody asks why. Coinbase is even trying to push people away from USDT to its own stablecoin USDC. At least so far in the stablecoin wars, Binance has been the least anti-competitive out of the 3 major stablecoins.

The CNBC hosts then brought up something Kevin O'Leary said in congress. Kevin O'Leary lied that FTX buying out Binance's stake in the company 2 years ago is what made FTX become insolvent and said he wants a Madoff clawback. This clown is basically saying FTX was insolvent for 2 years and he invested and took money to promote an already insolvent company.

First of all, why the fuck was the official paid spokesperson for SBF allowed to testify? There's a clear conflict of interest. Binance invested in FTX back in 2019 and cashed out 2 years ago which it had every right to do. How is it relevant to FTX collapse?

FTX raised billions in several funding rounds since then, invested in big banner promotions and siphoned off customer funds to personal accounts. Binance was also paid mostly in FTX air tokens and was holding it all without selling until Alameda insolvency was exposed by Coindesk. After learning about Alameda insolvency, Binance announced it would liquidate those tokens over a period of few months but FTX collapsed the next day. Binance is still holding those FTT tokens and got rekt like everyone else.

When the CNBC hosts asked about this Madoff clawback Kevin O'Leary asked for, CZ said Binance's lawyers will deal with something like that. Some trolls on twitter edited the interview clip to look like CZ gave this response relating to users withdrawals.

Btw how about Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Shaq, Larry David, Biden, Warren, Maxine, all the celebrities, politicians and big shot funds return every single dollar as well? I'm all for it! For some reason, Kevin O'Leary specifically wants Binance to return a payment from 2 years ago rightfully owed to Binance by FTX.

Kevin O'Leary also lied in congress that CZ's tweet bankrupted FTX. According to Bahamian court records, it was ex co-CEO of FTX Ryan Salame who blew the whistle on FTX fraud and Alameda insolvency long before Coindesk expose article and CZ's tweet.

There's literally verifiable records of where it all went. It went to Alameda, SBF's personal accounts, to his parents, various properties, political donations and the rest of it was just massively overmarked FTT, SRM illiquid air tokens on Alameda's balance sheet. But Kevin still decides to defend SBF and blame Binance for FTX collapse while sticking up for all this fraud.

What dirt does SBF have on Kevin O'Leary that Kevin does not want people to know to keep defending a guy who clearly stole all customers' money? He's blaming a tweet for bankrupting a company which was already exposed to be insolvent. How can a tweet bankrupt a company? If ex co-CEO Ryan Salame had not blown the whistle, FTX would have sold billions more worth of paper bitcoin and stole all that money. SBF pledged to donate $1 billion to Biden's 2024 campaign. Where do you think that was going to come from?

Kudos to Joe Kernan for calling out this disgraceful piece of shit for lying and playing victim. Kevin O'Leary should be investigated as to why he keeps defending SBF saying that he did nothing wrong, what due diligence he did on FTX before becoming an official spokesperson and what knowledge he had as an official spokesperson about what was going on at FTX?

Another question the CNBC hosts asked was regarding big four audits for crypto firms. Enron was a big four audited public company (it was big five at the time). All the 2008 frauds had big four audits. Celsius had a $750 million funding round in December 2021 in which the lead investor brought in big four auditor Deloitte to do "IPO level diligence". Here is a CFA talking about legacy auditors still learning how to properly audit crypto firms.

Big four audit firms keep failing. Now they’re being forced to change

The Wirecard Scandal - Hundreds of Wirecard employees lost their jobs, investors lost a total of €4.5 billion. Why didn't big four auditors recognize the fraud?

KPMG – How a Big Four auditing firm went rogue in its greed for profit

I think it would be more reliable than any big four audit to have a rigorous proof of reserves standard established that anyone can easily verify everything on chain. It would take a lot of work to establish a uniform industry standard but that is definitely the way forward. Legacy audits are obsolete for bitcoin and big four is just a grift. Bitcoin is self auditable by anyone and so should be all businesses involved in bitcoin.

Binance has over $60 billion in identified cold wallets and $13 billion flows were processed in a single day during an irrational FUD storm without a hitch. There are many reasons to criticize Binance. I have criticisms myself and shared one of them here, but the fact is no other exchange could handle these flows.

Exchanges should never be used for holding coins. Learn to self custody and better yet, learn to use P2P exchanges like Bisq, Robosats and HodlHodl. It's a small learning curve but once you learn you'll never need centralized exchanges anymore.

But Binance is not FTX. With FTX, there were not even identifiable cold wallets. FTX was outspending Binance, a much larger exchange on lavish marketing and partnerships, sold billions worth of paper bitcoin. Alameda was liquidating even sub $1 million positions on yield farms to backstop bitcoin withdrawals because it had zero reserves. Binance has shit to be called out on like every exchange but liquidity is not one of them.

Do not let anyone say FTX collapsed from a tweet. There have been a thousand tweets since last week fear mongering about Binance, many of them from people who sang praises of SBF.

FTX didn't collapse from a tweet. FTX collapsed from blatant fraud.