You do have a point, but they could:
* do much fewer batches of consolidation if they want to // no need to do all in one day
* do partial consolidations together with the actual user withdrawals (that would be imho a smarter implementation).
Playing devil's advocate (with a disclaimer that I know my client is worse than satan
)
- we don't know how many coins they have that they can't actually spend, and we don't know if they are not scraping every satoshi at this point
- maybe the wallets are under different supervision? Actually, this does make a lot of sense to me as I would want to limit the access of every single individual.
Yeah, it's a stretch but this is the best I can come up with.
* what if, while we were cheering this year for how much bitcoin has left the exchanges in 2022, this was more due stealing/working on fractional reserve than user withdrawals? (I know, this may be a bit paranoid though).
Highly possible!
I've said like ten times this week, all these companies have costs to run, if there is no money flow they will need to either take loans or find "investors", when these options run out, you touch the honeypot and you promise yourself you will cover the losses tomorrow, then next month and so on.
To be honest, this is so messed up I don't know what will be good or bad for the ecosystem right now, I'm wondering if those morons have played with a fractional reserve, and they don't have our coins if a bulls run starts, we hit 100k and everyone rushes to sell and take the profit, will the inflow be able to cover the losses or they won't be able to buy back the coins and honor the deposit, triggering a drop worse than ever?