> And decreasing, since BTC is dropping as we speak. Always a good idea to hedge a currency with the currency itsself
Depends on what you’re insuring, no? For theft, it actually makes senses, right? That way, you’re insuring a constant number of coins, no matter what the market is doing. If you’re insurance currency would tank during a bitcoin heist, you would lose the insurance effect.
This might sound good.. but freezing currencies is bad. It evaporates trust of liquidity from whoever is doing governance. It's part of the reason why the bond market is doing what its doing lately and why countries are on-shoring gold reserves.
That sounds kind of ideal, but I feel like their actions might have been justifiable.
If a massive heist like this triggered a run on one of the largest exchanges (Binance), potentially leading to a liquidity crisis, the consequences for the ecosystem could be far worse than temporarily freezing specific addresses holding stolen stablecoins.
Not saying that's what would have happened, but it seemed like a real possibility. And I'm not saying freezing assets is good in general, but in this particular case, maybe it was the lesser evil.
No. Permissioned cryptocurrency is all the horrible parts of cash and all the horrible parts of crypto put together with none of the advantages of either.
I want crypto because I don't trust nation states with the leverage and dials of fiat currency. All we've done is replace government with trusting whoever made a particular stablecoin.
All cryptocurrency is permissioned. This is because governments can make it illegal for someone to turn your cryptocurrency into real currency. You need their permission to turn it into pizzas and yachts.
Only if you wanted to turn it into fiat currency for the transaction, right? If the yacht seller would take payment in crypto, you need no government’s permission, right?
Surely the government would get in the way there, but holding cocaine is also illegal, not just transacting with it. If the government went that route, they'd have to ban all crypto outright.
Bitcoin is volatile enough you can cherry-pick pretty much any %age you want based on the dates you choose. Which you seem to have done here - "happening" to choose the day with the lowest single day value in the last 3 years for your comparison point.
For another narrative, it was 83,038 a month ago on Sept 29th, so is down 5% in one month. And one year ago it was 112,562 on Oct 29th 2025 - down over 30% in one year. Well into "bear market" territory.
Using "traditional" market indicators and definitions for things like bear/bull markets doesn't feel sensible for such a volatile market.
Fine, but the comment "It's a (weak) bear market capitulation signal" is inapplicable, either because defining bear/bull markets doesn't feel sensible, or because it's not currently in the capitulation stage of a bear market, but some way off the bottom.
Though in that case the crash was directly due to "effectively altruist" SBF fraudulently dumping customer assets in a half-brained and presumably stimulant-addled attempt to manipulate the market and reduce his liabilities.
Not making any market predictions here-- just saying that it's probably not that useful to generalize from that event.
Not to be too pedantic, but with some napkin math, I don't think this is true. Looking for clarification!!
I downloaded Binance's self published market data (https://data.binance.vision/), calculated spot and futures volume for the past year, and then applied their *highest fee tier* on both sides of the volume (for every $1 traded, they generate a fee on the taker and the maker. the fee rate is asymmetrical).
Spot revenue worked out to $7.6B USD, perps revenue worked out to $13.8B
This is an upper bound on the fees charged on volume. Binance also scams their users with a b-book, has DMM deals, etc.
I don't want to get into all that today.
But the final result is that they print somewhere in the range of $20B per year on fees. I guess CZ also has huge stockpiles of BTC and stuff. A 1% rise in BTC price probably means more for them than their actual fees, LOL.
All this to say, I think $5.6B significantly hurts.
See Google's stock price today. Their ads business slowed down a bit, and their stock tanked 10%. If binance was publicly traded, I imagine a similar affect would be demonstrated on their price.
That $100 billion is exchange holdings, i.e. customer funds, not market cap. It would be highly illegal for Binance to use any of that $100 billion to cover this loss.
Top post on /r/cryptocurrency Good to see all these organic posts across social media.
MelangeBot OP • 2h ago Their insurance fund (SAFU) is completely wiped out, it's only $1 billion in BTC
The name of the fund was originally inspired by this meme
FWIW, at the end of every crypto bear market, a CEX usually blows up (eg FTX)...
Dead internet
I’m sorry to say this is not dead internet.
Don't worry, we're well moderated and free of bots here.
[X] Doubt
If ever there was proof that this site doesn't do sarcasm, this comment being downvoted is it.
Neurodivergent people have trouble detecting irony and sarcasm.
It's okay. The downvotes give me a good pulse for where this place is at these days.
If you think that's wild you should see some of the stuff that gets flagged to death on the front page.
Came back here to see if i was seeing double
> As of 2026, the SAFU fund comprises crypto assets valued at approximately US$1 billion, held entirely in Bitcoin
And decreasing, since BTC is dropping as we speak. Always a good idea to hedge a currency with the currency itsself
> And decreasing, since BTC is dropping as we speak. Always a good idea to hedge a currency with the currency itsself
Depends on what you’re insuring, no? For theft, it actually makes senses, right? That way, you’re insuring a constant number of coins, no matter what the market is doing. If you’re insurance currency would tank during a bitcoin heist, you would lose the insurance effect.
[flagged]
Stablecoins are frozen so the hole will likely be around two billion dollars.
Binance has equity and cash flow cover this, outside the insurance fund.
They custody $150B.
FTX was larger in dollar terms and ecosystem was smaller back in a day.
This might sound good.. but freezing currencies is bad. It evaporates trust of liquidity from whoever is doing governance. It's part of the reason why the bond market is doing what its doing lately and why countries are on-shoring gold reserves.
That sounds kind of ideal, but I feel like their actions might have been justifiable.
If a massive heist like this triggered a run on one of the largest exchanges (Binance), potentially leading to a liquidity crisis, the consequences for the ecosystem could be far worse than temporarily freezing specific addresses holding stolen stablecoins.
Not saying that's what would have happened, but it seemed like a real possibility. And I'm not saying freezing assets is good in general, but in this particular case, maybe it was the lesser evil.
No. Permissioned cryptocurrency is all the horrible parts of cash and all the horrible parts of crypto put together with none of the advantages of either.
I want crypto because I don't trust nation states with the leverage and dials of fiat currency. All we've done is replace government with trusting whoever made a particular stablecoin.
Permissionless crypto is the only real crypto.
All cryptocurrency is permissioned. This is because governments can make it illegal for someone to turn your cryptocurrency into real currency. You need their permission to turn it into pizzas and yachts.
Only if you wanted to turn it into fiat currency for the transaction, right? If the yacht seller would take payment in crypto, you need no government’s permission, right?
If the yacht seller would take payment in cocaine, surely the government wouldn't prohibit the transaction…
Surely the government would get in the way there, but holding cocaine is also illegal, not just transacting with it. If the government went that route, they'd have to ban all crypto outright.
governments freeze currency all the time.
Only the shithole countries freeze currency trading. That doesn't happen with actual reserve fiat currencies.
The primary reserve currency does it all the time. https://ofacblockedfundslawyers.com/us-sanctions-freeze-doll...
That's different. They freeze individual accounts subject to legal orders. They don't freeze the whole currency.
Is that not what is happening here?
It is, thus the links being to individual wallets.
You literally made a reply to a person making this exact point ...
> Only the shithole countries
Seriously?
Well maybe it could happen with actual reserve currencies, but it certainly doesn't happen with platinum level, diamond tier luxury fiat currencies.
Oh you didn't know? I bet you trade in "dollars". That's cute.
Name one anyone trusts.
definitely not the ones I keep track of, eh.
they borrowed ETH against the stablecoins on AAVE before they were frozen
Doesn't matter how much they custody!
Uh don’t you not want to cover losses with customer funds?
Put some pyramid in that blockchain?!
Recursive pyramids!
> Changpeng Zhao (CZ), former CEO of Binance, tweeted "Funds are safe"
Seems like the issue here is that he became former CEO. Funds are not safu without him...
Another guy pardoned by Trump.[1]
[1] https://people.com/trump-pardons-changpeng-zhao-binance-cryp...
> Funds are safe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DelF6zEHXpE
The accent makes no sense
Wait. How does the insurance fund run significantly lower than the primary?
Fractional reserve banking but for Bitcoin.
Do you mean bull market?
It's a (weak) bear market capitulation signal - max fear when people think everything is broken.
It seems like bitcoin, currently 78719, was only 58526 on 30 June. That's 34.5% up in four months, meeting the definition of bull market.
Bitcoin is volatile enough you can cherry-pick pretty much any %age you want based on the dates you choose. Which you seem to have done here - "happening" to choose the day with the lowest single day value in the last 3 years for your comparison point.
For another narrative, it was 83,038 a month ago on Sept 29th, so is down 5% in one month. And one year ago it was 112,562 on Oct 29th 2025 - down over 30% in one year. Well into "bear market" territory.
Using "traditional" market indicators and definitions for things like bear/bull markets doesn't feel sensible for such a volatile market.
Fine, but the comment "It's a (weak) bear market capitulation signal" is inapplicable, either because defining bear/bull markets doesn't feel sensible, or because it's not currently in the capitulation stage of a bear market, but some way off the bottom.
it will be sub 50k soon probably. a weak rebound already losing air
already over. a tiny bounce after falling 55%
But when FTX blew up crypto went down even further..
You mean FTX?
Yes, typo.
much more was at risk as a percentage of market size, market was in worse shape,
Though in that case the crash was directly due to "effectively altruist" SBF fraudulently dumping customer assets in a half-brained and presumably stimulant-addled attempt to manipulate the market and reduce his liabilities.
Not making any market predictions here-- just saying that it's probably not that useful to generalize from that event.
I think the point is more that when something bad happens in markets it creates fear, which generally leads to downturns (for at least some time).
The insurance fund is not for covering hacks.
Binance is making so much money, covering this hack is peanuts for them.
Not to be too pedantic, but with some napkin math, I don't think this is true. Looking for clarification!!
I downloaded Binance's self published market data (https://data.binance.vision/), calculated spot and futures volume for the past year, and then applied their *highest fee tier* on both sides of the volume (for every $1 traded, they generate a fee on the taker and the maker. the fee rate is asymmetrical).
Spot revenue worked out to $7.6B USD, perps revenue worked out to $13.8B
This is an upper bound on the fees charged on volume. Binance also scams their users with a b-book, has DMM deals, etc.
I don't want to get into all that today.
But the final result is that they print somewhere in the range of $20B per year on fees. I guess CZ also has huge stockpiles of BTC and stuff. A 1% rise in BTC price probably means more for them than their actual fees, LOL.
All this to say, I think $5.6B significantly hurts.
See Google's stock price today. Their ads business slowed down a bit, and their stock tanked 10%. If binance was publicly traded, I imagine a similar affect would be demonstrated on their price.
How much money do you think they are making? Because I really doubt this is peanuts to them.
Binance has a market cap just shy of $100B, so a $5.8B sure hurts, but it’s not a showstopper I’d say.
A market cap predicated on the price of bitcoin. A market cap is not funds available, it's just the valuation of the market, which is fickle.
Market cap has nothing to do with free cash to absorb a $6billion loss. Money is also going to pour out of Binance now, one would imagine.
> Market cap has nothing to do with free cash to absorb a $6billion loss
I agree. My wording was imprecise. I was trying to give an idea of the size of the company/ecosystem, using BNB’s market cap as a proxy.
As Binance doesn’t publish their financial statements, it’s difficult to get the more relevant metrics, like FCF.
It really hurts when there's this much misunderstanding of market cap vs. revenue. P/E ratios exist for a reason.
What an arrogant assumption! I know the fucking difference between market cap and revenue.
I also know Binance is a privately held company that doesn’t publish financial statements. If you can tell me their P/E, go right ahead.
Not that I think P/E would have much use here. P/E is a relative valuation metric (how cheap/expensive).
The relevant metric would be something like FCF, as gizajob wrote, but again: not available.
I was trying to give an idea of the size of the company, that is all.
boss: did you just send $5B of our company's liquid capital to a nigerian prince?
me: no worries boss, our market cap is $100B
boss (who is also the tooth fairy): oh right cool np
That $100 billion is exchange holdings, i.e. customer funds, not market cap. It would be highly illegal for Binance to use any of that $100 billion to cover this loss.
That's assuming these AI hacks stop, right? Why would they, ever?