Is Binance Regulation Smoke and Mirrors?
Today Binance officially shuts its doors to American citizens... or so they say.
How does that even make sense? They are providing a service that doesn't require KYC. What's going to stop me from logging in to a VPN hosted in Switzerland? Nothing.
You can withdraw 2 BTC a day without any regulation whatsoever on Binance. That's good enough for what? 99.9% of the population?
This reminds me of back in the day when I kept getting in trouble for pirating HBO shows. My ISP wants my business but HBO is putting legal pressure on them to react. Comcast didn't care, they just pretended to care to get HBO lawyers off their backs. You can always count on Megacorps to do the bare minimum to ensure the highest profit margins.
I ended up getting 5 strikes on my account. 3 strikes and you're out. But wait, did we forget to tell you that strikes disappear after 6 months? lol. A number is chosen and only the top 0.01% worst offenders are going to be punished. If that.
I haven't even received an email from Binance saying they are going to limit my account to withdraws only. Are they expecting everyone to keep up on random crypto news? I get the feeling that the only people who are going to be affected are the ones that did KYC in the first place.
This is all part of the dance that corporations play with regulators to make it look like they are in compliance when there are loopholes everywhere. I guess perception is reality. If people think they can't use Binance semi-anonymously then most of them won't even try.
Certainly, I may be way off base here.
We'll just have to see how it all plays out.
Updates to follow.
Either way its been crippled lately..
Posted using Partiko Android
VPNs can disconnect on you and also your browser/plugins could potentially leak your location.
I've personally seen Binance force KYC on people to withdraw when there is some question that comes up about their actual location.
At the very least people should use both a VPN and a proxy browser extension. People dealing with serious money might just rent a virtual machine in a Binance friendly country and RDP into that to access their account.
Okay, you say that but you can always withdraw,
which means you can create a new anonymous account and withdraw to it and continue trading.
I just now sold a tiny bit of ETH just to make sure I could. No VPN at all.
It's funny because they have my phone number (10+ years) and my email that I've been using for 20+ years. They know exactly where I am from, but the legal team is obviously cutting as many corners as possible, as per usual. They only care about regulation in the context of making more money. Count on it.
What I'm trying to say is that they are looking for an excuse to let you use their service. If your VPN disconnects you they're going to pretend like they didn't notice.
Again, I have personally witnessed them force someone to do KYC to withdraw their funds because their VPN disconnected while they were in Africa.
I would take all possible precautions if I were dealing with any significant funds, and not assume they would not be capricious in their application of policy.
Fair enough. Personally the amount of funds I have on Binance is quite low. Perhaps I should avoid VPN at this point as it disconnecting would result in red flags. Logging in from Sweden for the first time might not be the best idea after a two year history in the same place.
Good points! I went ahead and moved all my stuff to KuCoin, but was considering to do the VPN thing. Was just to lazy in the end LOL.
I think I tried to sign up for binance but couldn't because of the America thing. It was one of those popular sites but when I tried to use it, bam seeya later you're American. Pretty lame!
I do not know.
Your points you have brought up are definitely part of the story, but it doesn't explain everything. There is more... something else... something greater.
My feelings are that many of the big names in exchanges are just fronts for the people behind the banks.
There are too many trading shenanigans that go on.
And we all know bitcoins entire market cap (not what is traded) isn't enough to handle but a small percentage of the illegal drug market. That takes the biggest banks to move that amount of money.
So... the KYC was about something else. The Binance leaving The US is about something else.
i don' trust any of em further than i can throw em.
Well, that's what most companies (even people) will do when it comes to compliance. Just do the bare minimal to comply. If the rules say US citizens should not access, I will simply block US IP addresses. It will work until the next review by the regulators
The funny thing is that they aren't even doing that.
I can still do everything as normal so far... with no warnings to the contrary.