Topic: More platforms will bite the dust? (Read 669 times)

This, yobit has been listing and promoting self-proclaimed Ponzi schemes and "cryptocurrencies" without a blockchain for like a decade.

Then they start hosting their own ponzis, branding them as "rise only markets", "investbox" and others, at this point just plainly steal the coins will be an improvement. Yet people still fall for it, even when the sheer number of pyramid schemes available as tabs in the main page screams scam

This is nothing to do with the cryptocurrencies and i will not say that crypto is responsible for this layoff of employees from the companies. We are in a global recession and many companies (both crypto related and non-crypto) are reducing their expenses and making sure that there is no extra manpower.

I think this trend will continue throughout the global recession. We may see more such layoff news in near future from different
companies.

Because YoBit is an outright scam. They don't need to worry about bank runs or anything like that, because they are quite happy to just shut down withdrawals and out right steal the coins of their users. Not to mention that the majority of shitcoins you can trade on YoBit don't actually have a blockchain at all and are created by YoBit only to separate idiots from their bitcoin. It doesn't matter if someone wants to withdraw 10 trillion MadeUpYoBitCoinNumber14, since YoBit can just create that out of thin air whenever they need.

The most surprising thing here is how they manage to continue to attract a steady stream of newbies and idiots to keep them running, even during a bear market. Although their outgoings will be very minimal since they don't need to pay any support staff or indeed process any withdrawals.

Hehe correct! It would be much safer to assume that Binance is in more danger than expected of insolvency after the outflows and thd mass liquidations that occured in the exchange if you describe it that way. BUSD is also not collaterized 100% during certain times.

In any case, I also remember creating the thread asking if FTX would bite the dust and many of us assumed that it was not in trouble, almost making it a silly question. We should certainly not make another similar error again.

I have also wondered about this actually. It somehow amuses me. I can remember many years ago that the exchanges to be avoided like the plague are the likes of YoBit and HitBTC. Their brands are almost openly equated with scam. But look how they've survived all the things that caused great exchanges and other too-big-to-fail platforms to lay off employees and even file bankruptcies. It's funny how it seems the last laugh is theirs.

Well, there have been plenty of smaller exchanges which have gone bankrupt or exit scammed over the last few months and years as well, they just don't make the news nearly as much as when an exchange like FTX does it. But every exchange out there, regardless of size or regulations, is just one bank run away from declaring insolvency and taking all deposits with them. And as we've seen repeatedly over the last few months, when that happens regular uses are unlikely to get back a single satoshi of their money.

Actually, I'm wondering about how the notoriously scammy, shittier platforms endure the bear seasons while the more professional and (over?) hyped ones fall as flies, is almost funny


But seriously, as long as Bitcoin and altcoins are regulated as securities and no currency, the fully regulated exchanges are the risky ones in a bear market. They are compelled to treat the price's downs as capital loses, when in a perfect world the exchange earn its money by traded volume ( higher in both bull and bear markets than in stable ones)

I am of the opinion that all exchanges are equally risky. We all have absolutely no idea what is going on behind the scenes at any exchange until it is too late and they are filing their bankruptcy documents showing just how negative their balance books are and just how much in debt they are. Go back a year and everyone though Celsius, Voyager, FTX were some of the most well regulated and least risky exchanges. And look at where we are now.

If the authorities do enforce some kind of sanctions on Binance, they will be put in place without warning and will be enforced before anyone has a chance to react. Waiting to hear news of such sanctions before you withdraw your coins leaves you at risk. Withdraw now.

Reason is based on APY I honestly think this is a bais opinion because layoffs are not synonymous to crypto companies at the moment, other top known companies IRL such as Twitter, Alphabet, Amazon, Google list goes on have laid off several of its employees citing reasons from improved technology such as AI introduction, or simply cutting costs of running these companies against huge wage bills.

For our crypto companies it's likely that this happened because crypto value dropped and could not support the wage bill unless a bullish miracle happens to save the employees jobs.

I am not arguing that Binance is 100% safe. I am asking how concerned should we be on Binance. Is there a bigger chance than expected that it will be one of the next exchanges to bite the dust or is it still reasonably safe if compared to other exchanges that might bite the dust?

I speculate on October when Sam Bankrupt-Fried's trial begins, everyone should begin avoiding Binance because CZ will be one of the people who will be blamed for market manipulation on FTT that triggered the collapse of FTX. A crackdown might be ordered on CZ and Binance.

I know that many people have failed to understand how risky exchanges are, that is why they think some are reasonably safe to keep their money, the best decision for people that use centralized exchanges in the crypto market today is for them to take every exchange as being unsafe and consider that they can collapse at anytime, if people do that, then they would only trade on these exchanges and withdraw their money into self custody immediately, and if they are day traders, they would only leave a small amount in the exchange for that purpose.

But i don't think it helps anybody if we continue to debate which exchange is reasonably safe and incapable of biting the dust, i would never recommend any exchange under that category, so people do not take my advice and lose money later on.

No exchange is safe. We are seeing DCG's subsidiaries starting to have major problems. Everyone knows about the problems with Grayscale over the last year or so, and now Genesis are reportedly preparing to file for bankruptcy. They are also selling off CoinDesk. DCG have tens of billions of assets under management. If they are not too big to fail, then neither is Binance or Coinbase or any other exchange.

So how long before Binance start to get investigate for money laundering?

@o_e_l_e_o. I am talking about whale traders, not the whales who belong to the banking insitution category. Institutions want their own trading desk with their own orderbook or a trading desk of another institution that they trust.

Also, should the community be more concerned on Binance or is it still considered reasonably safe from being the next exchange to bite the dust?



Mid-day Wednesday, federal prosecutors proudly announced criminal charges against Bitzlato, a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange. The exchange’s founder, Russian national Anatoly Legkodymov, apparently known by the nickname “Gandalf,” was arrested last night in Miami.

Source https://decrypt.co/119494/crypto-panics-then-jeers-at-doj-announcement-of-major-action-against-tiny-chinese-exchange-bitzlato



This is where the news on Bitzlato becomes more concerning for Binance.



Approximately two-thirds of Bitzlato’s top receiving and sending counterparties are associated with darknet markets or scams. For example, Bitzlato’s top three receiving counterparties, by total amount of BTC received between May 2018 and September 2022 were: (1) Binance, a VASP; (2) the Russia-connected darknet market Hydra; and (3) the alleged Russia-based Ponzi scheme “TheFiniko.”

Source https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/Order_Bitzlato_FINAL%20508.pdf



The big outflows, the mass liquidations, the undercollateralization on BUSD and presently this news on Bitzlato should make the community more concerned, I reckon.

If someone is making trades of that size, then they aren't going to Coinbase and just dropping an order for 500 BTC on their order books. They will be trading OTC, and will have much more in the way of legal protections and guarantees than the 99.9% of regular centralized exchange users.

I think the vast majority of people should use decentralized peer to peer exchanges, in order to benefit from the security and privacy they provide, and not lose their coins in the next centralized exchange which goes bankrupt. But I would never recommend a project which styles itself as "DeFi". As with every other fad in this space, the vast majority of DeFi projects are not decentralized in the slightest, and many of them turn out to be outright scams.

Whales use centralized exchanges because the markets in them have more liquidity. Give me an example of a decentralized exchange where a trader who trades millions of dollars per trade can buy or sell everyday without moving the market.

In any case, for ordinary people in the cryptospace similar to many of us, I agree. This is a reason why there is an argument that ordinary people in the community should try Defi. We can trade in Defi without giving up the custody of our coins.

Because as we all know, fiat banks are the epitome of trustworthiness. Certainly no insider trading, tax evasion, money laundering, market manipulation, dodgy loans, money printing, etc., etc.

Going bank further than FTX, the thing which kicked off this run of insolvent exchanges was Three Arrows Capital being liquidated, which then led to Voyager and Celsius, which then spread to others, and so on. And it doesn't even have to be another exchange. Some critical bug in an altcoin which results in the price tanking could be more than enough to bankrupt an exchange holding a large amount of that altcoin.

Even something completely unrelated to your chosen exchange can result in you losing all your coins. Doesn't matter the exchange - if your coins are not in your own wallet, they are not safe.

That is another factor to consider for people who think the centralized exchange they store their money in is safe and wouldn't collapse, there are many external factors that can cause an exchange to collapse, which includes and not limited to the collapse of another different exchange or service, which leaves many centralized services connected to it exposed and might lead to them going bankrupt too.

It has happened with many centralized exchanges and services, it happened with ftx, and it can happen with another centralized service soon, which may affect even the 'biggest' exchanges that people think is safe for them to keep their money in.

Apparently millions of those who live in the belief that CEX are crypto banks and that there is no reason not to trust them. Even when the famous CZ is included in the whole story with the claim that 99% of users will sooner or later lose everything if they use non-custodial wallets, I'm not at all surprised that almost nothing has changed after FTX.

After all, even some forum members who have access to information see nothing wrong in continuing to believe in various crypto messiahs who promise them that they will never let them down.

Oh cool. Tax dollars being used to bail out scammy centralized exchanges which are busy gambling/losing all their customers' deposits.

A bail out also doesn't mean they are safe. Plenty of large companies have received bail outs and still gone under. BlockFi even received a bail out only weeks prior to their collapse (from FTX, no less). And as I understand it, there are many other centralized exchanges which use Silvergate, so if they do collapse then again we could easily see a large domino effect spread to other exchanges.

So as always, get your coins in to your own wallets. Who in their right mind is still using centralized exchanges at this point!?

Hehehe, however, it appears that they will not be one of the next platforms to bite the dust. Silvergate bank recently might have received a bail out of $4.3 billion from the Federal Home Loan bank of San Francisco. This occured before the news article from Yahoo Finance.

It appears everyone is late on this update. However, Silvergate bank might still be a takeover target especially because of the $4.3 billion that they are presently holding hehehehe.



At December 31, 2022, the Company held $4.3 billion of short-term Federal Home Loan Bank advances.

Source https://ir.silvergate.com/news/news-details/2023/Silvergate-Announces-Select-Preliminary-Fourth-Quarter-2022-Financial-Metrics-and-Provides-Business-Update/default.aspx

Huh. And here I though one bitcoin = one bitcoin. But it turns out if a customer deposits one bitcoin, the price of bitcoin in fiat falls, and they then try to withdraw that one bitcoin, suddenly that one bitcoin isn't worth one bitcoin anymore and the exchange needs to sell a bunch of other assets to let that one bitcoin be worth one bitcoin again? Isn't that weird!

In other words, they were doing what every other insolvent exchange over the past few months has been doing, and were running a fractional reserve system while using customers' deposits to gamble on various investments for their own profit, loan out to questionable third parties for their own profit, or maybe even just spend outright like FTX were doing.

The much endorsed cryptobank might also be another platform that might bite the dust? It appears that everythng might be nearing the very bottom with all these crypto platforms capitulating everywhere.

It also appears they want a bail out when their executives mentioned that they might become a takeover target hehehe. It will not be shocking if CZ's team is talking to them already.



Silvergate Capital Corp. shares plunged after the bank said the crypto industry’s meltdown triggered a run on deposits, prompting the company to sell assets at a steep loss and fire 40% of its staff.

Customers withdrew about $8.1 billion of digital-asset deposits from the bank during the fourth quarter, which forced it to sell securities and related derivatives at a loss of $718 million, according to a statement Thursday. Executives said on a conference call that Silvergate may become a takeover target.

Source https://finance.yahoo.com/news/silvergate-tumbles-ftx-implosion-prompts-140334817.html

A handful of layoffs can be normal or expected. Firing 50% of your workforce is something different entirely.

And it's not just the layoffs. They are cancelling all staff bonuses and cutting pay for the employees they aren't firing. Apparently they are also forcing all employees to take their salary in stablecoins rather than in fiat. And after those announcements, Justin Sun shut down all internal communications because his employees were rightly going mad. There have been huge outflows from the exchange. Not least of all Justin Sun himself cashing out over $1.5 billion over the past couple of months.

There is something big happening at Huobi, and they could very well be the next exchange to collapse. Withdraw all your funds now, if it isn't already too late. Also make sure you delete any Huobi apps from your devices, given what happened with SBF/one of his employees pushing malicious auto-updates to FTX's app after they became insolvent.

A large number of layoffs is not necessarily an indicator of the bankruptcy of the exchange, these things happen in bear markets and also during economic recessions when there is less work and less profits.

But by reading the percentages in which workers were laid off from the various exchanges, we can find an indication of the status of the exchange in general. For example, Crypto.com laid off 2,000 employees, which is the largest number I think, and there was some talk recently about the existence of financial problems and the possibility of collapse after FTX .

In any case, whether these indications are correct or not, centralized exchanges are no longer a safe place to store crypto assets. The only safe place is the wallet that has its own private keys.

News update.

According to some people in social media, the exchange has shutdown internal communications groups for employees and internal feedback channels following circulating rumors of laying off hundreds more of employees.

Onchain analyzers similar to Nansen have begun recording the outflows from the exchange and it appears they are suffering heavy outflows. If this becomes a liqudity crisis, I reckon this will be something very much like a bank run.



There were rumors that Huobi planned to lay off hundreds of employees in the coming weeks. Perhaps the rumors have now been confirmed, as the exchange said that it will lay off hundreds of employees in the coming weeks.

Ever since the news hit the streets, the TRX token fell by 7.48% in the last 24 hours, followed by Huobi’s HT token, which also lost 11% during the same period, according to the data from CoinMarketCap. Furthermore, TRON’s stablecoin USDD has depegged and is now trading at $0.9787. Now, according to the latest reports, the exchange is experiencing heavy outflows.

According to the Nansen data, the Huobi exchange is witnessing turbulent trading and outflows of $64 million in the last 24 hours. On-chain data also reveals that the exchange has experienced over $100 million in weekly outflows.

Source https://watcher.guru/news/huobi-exchange-experiences-millions-in-outflows-amidst-the-layoff-drama

Sorry, I should have been more specific I was referring to bitcoin. If you dabble in centralized shitcoins, then your coins are never safe, regardless of what you do with them.

Oh well, that settles it then. We've definitely not heard this exact statement from any other centralized platforms which then went on to collapse within weeks or even days. Right!?

Now, let's take a look at the actual report:
So, in summary, not an audit, provides no assurances, and only looks at their liabilities to individual customers, and not any other liabilities they may have. And let's just ignore the fact that CRO - the centralized token they control and can print at will to sell and prop up any other insolvent part of their business - was suspiciously missing from this not-an-audit.

So, as I've said countless times over the last few weeks, this proves absolutely nothing and any coins which are stored on crypto.com continue to be at risk, just as with any centralized exchange.

His history does not really look that bad, just that he tries to cash in at the end of the wave cheaply and quickly. The USB thing is a perfect example, looking at the dates in te article he got in as the market was being flooded with cheap USB / sold state storage. Newer better ones were all over the market and better stuff was coming quickly, he went after the crap low end. Same with his other services, undercut everyone and either make a little money OR hope to get bought out by the big guys. Looks like he finally did find a winner with Crypto.com, only time will tell.

But as always. Not your keys, not your coins.

-Dave

Agreed that it might only be a contraction of the business because it needs to adjust to the contraction of the cryptospace, however, is this really okay? Can it not also imply that the condition of the business is questionable? We can never suggest that those exchanges are financially safe in this bear market.

In any case, this article about Crypto.com's CEO. It appears that mainstream news media are researching on the history of the important people in the cryptospace and finding red flags.



Kris Marszalek wants everyone to know that his company, Crypto.com, is safe and in good hands. His TV appearances and tweets make that clear.

On Friday, Crypto.com published an audited proof of reserves, attesting that customer assets were held on a one-to-one basis, meaning that all deposits are 100% backed by Crypto.com’s reserves.  The audit was performed by the Mazars Group, the former accountant for the Trump Organization.

While no evidence has emerged of wrongdoing at Crypto.com, Marszalek’s business history is replete with red flags. Following the collapse of a prior company in 2009, a judge called Marszalek’s testimony unreliable. His business activities before 2016 — the year he founded what would become Crypto.com — involved a multimillion-dollar settlement over claims of defective products, corporate bankruptcy and an e-commerce company that failed shortly after a blowout marketing campaign left sellers unable to access their money.

Source https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/09/cryptocom-kris-marszalek-involved-bankruptcy-offshore-holdings-client-money-monaco.html

Investors are concerned following the defeat of FTX. Even I believe that a few more platforms will collapse at some point. The crypto space is becoming more difficult to navigate, and it is tough to comprehend in any centralized platform. Though I have stated from the start that centralized platforms are not a safer place to store funds, we must use them on circumstance. The most significant consequence is that we never know when a platform will collapse, and if it does, only a few users will be affected. So, if all we have to do is secure our funds from any centralized platform, we are almost safe

That's true in most cases, but it also depends on the type of coin. If we are talking about bitcoin, an asset that can't be censored by a third-party, then your own personal wallet is the best place for it. But USDC is a centralized stablecoin that has censorship implemented on a protocol level, just like USDT and the rest of them (except the decentralized DAI). If the issuer wants, they can block and blacklist any address holding USDC, no matter if it's on an exchange or private wallet. Just a few weeks ago, exchanges froze USDT on addresses that belong to FTX.       

Actually that is not correct. The real safest on the market is Bitcoin that is stored in an offline wallet. But it will have to share that title with Queen, who will have many more gigs to play as more platforms bite the dust.

All these layoffs were announced months in advance before they happened, and I already wrote in one of the threads where we discussed that all these companies first try to cut their costs by laying off as many people as possible, and then forcing those who remained to work at least twice as much. This is quite a common occurrence in a capitalist society where money is God, and company owners are some kind of high priests who serve it by exploiting those at the bottom of the pyramid.

I do not think that this is a bad sign in the sense that all these companies should be seen in the light of possible failure, because we can hardly expect that all these companies are managed in the way that the famous Mr. Bankman does with his company. In other words, to destroy a $20 billion company overnight, you still need to have a certain amount of skill, and we don't see such people every day, do we?

This dude is a great pretender and talker. He literally made us believed that there's nothing much happening to FTX until CZ has opened it up and then the domino came to catch him.

It happens also to non-crypto companies when they have to cut budget and constraints. And probably it has got something to do with the bear market and I guess when we're back in the bull run, they will be hiring again and needing more manpower to support their services. When they've been overstaffed, it's not a big issue to them because the value of their respective exchange tokens were quite high in value and then the bear came.

I agree to some extent, but some things are simply unpredictable. Taking note that there have been layoffs not only in the bitcoin/cryptocurrency industry, but the broader technology/fintech industry took a huge beating as well.

I think people should be much much more cautious in dealing with platforms that offer high APY than those that have laid off some employees. They're more inclined to unsustainable practices and being Ponzis. Laying off employees, on the other hand, is probably part and parcel of managing a company. Company operations expand and contract. They experience bullish and bearish cycles. Depending on how bearish the market is, lay offs might be an option. With what the crypto market has gone through--from very bullish to severe winter in just months-- it is understandable if operational costs have to be trimmed down rather quickly after possible mass hiring and some expansion efforts.

I very much agree. This should not be taken with a grain of salt, however. Similar to what occurred to FTX, much of people in the community would never have considered that it was going to be the next exchange to bite the dust during October.


You did not look further down the list. There is an additional 1100 layoffs on the 60 listed.


You might be correct that it is nothing to worry about, however, it would still be the correct decision to be careful and avoid them because in a cryptospace bear market, there should be always something to worry about hehehe.

Laying-off of workers is a clear indication that all is not well with a particular firm but it could also be a management strategy to reposition the company for efficiency and profit maximization. Most of these exchanges were reported to be overstaffed but the downturn of the sector is now forcing the management to maximize human resources and reduce waste. With the current problems in the crypto space it would be dangerous to keep you money not only in exchanges that layoff workers but even those that are still employing massively. It is very clear from the fall of FTX that most of these company CEOs lack financial intelligence and risk management skills.     

I was planning to make such list on June Crypto exchanges with financial problems  (Read 290 times) but after a while, I came to the conviction that the dismissal of employees and such indicators are normal due to the expectations of a recession and the Federal Reserve’s continued raising interest rates, with the Bitcoin winter.

The most obvious example of this is Twitter. Thousands of workers have been fired and the service is still working. The reason for this is the excessive expansion in the number of workers over a period of time, for example, due to Covid-19, closures, and the increase in the price of Bitcoin.

the labor shortage does not indicate anything if you compare it with the levels of employment before 2020.

In lending services, the interest rate will play a larger role.

This would have been an interesting thread to track platforms that are having financial troubles, but OP didn't bother updating it (list: Crypto exchanges with financial problems)

I remember at that time when a number of popular exchanges were announcing job cuts, It's ironic that FTX was instead hiring even more  
FTX will not freeze hiring amid layoffs at other crypto firms, CEO states



So while we are looking at the list, there could be some quite exchange out there pretending that all is good yet they are mismanaging user funds

---

Looks like you just bought your account. A crypto OG from 2013 who seemed knowledgeble can never think like the way you do.

I doubt a bit numbers there, Compass mining is having just 80 employees and they have like 75 specialists on their "about us" page. Plus with all their location it would be simply impossible to run that with just 80, especially since they deal with a lot more stuff. Some of them might have subsidiaries as FTX had.

Also, two things:

They are getting another round of lay-offs, seems like the unicorn is not feeling too well, might have to get him to a vet after the coinbase deal failed seems like down is the only way to go.

When you suddenly realize that all the promised money is not coming as all your investors lately have backed off their deals I wonder why you still keep any employees at all and not just shut down and run the whole "investment" company on Twitter and youtube from home as that's all she's doing lately.

This amount of lay-off also tells another side of the story, all those people were basically earning their wages on the money people were pouring into crypto, they weren't doing anything else, just moving money from A to B and waiting for B to increase in price, I'm pretty sure that while telling people to hold on social media silently they were selling coins to have to pay their expenses. This model is flawed from the start and until you have a bull run and a huge inflow of cash everyone running the company like that will keep firing.

Which reminds me of one on the list, Core Scientific:


If one of the largest miners is liquidating bitcoins to survive, what about the others who don't produce a cent o their own?

The layoffs have been discussed in several other threads and probably have very little to do with how the platform is doing in general.
One of my replies from months ago about it:


Laying people off may or may not be an indicator of financial issues. But, it's usually not a good one specifically in the tech and financial markets. And lets face it, exchanges are more or less in both of those. They keep people that may or may not be needed just in case, and they do massive hiring to get things done 'yesterday'.

-Dave

I have absolutely zero doubt more platforms will go. And not just small ones most people haven't heard of, but some more "big name" ones like BlockFi.

This is true, but it does reveal poor business management and poor future planning. Bitcoin is volatile. Everyone knows that. To be running a business based on bitcoin and be so unprepared for bitcoin to be volatile that you have to start firing people suggests to me that you don't really know what you are doing. Certainly not the kind of people I would trust to look after my money for me.

Your own wallet is the only safe place for your coins right now.

While high APY is definitely a huge red flag even before everything that has happened in the last six months (are there even any platforms left that offer ~10% like Celsius did ?), I don't think that exchanges laying off people is something to worry about. It even makes sense as crypto businesses (and not just them) tend to hire/lay off based on the market conditions and since we are deep into bear market that may last for a couple years and you have to cut your expenses in order to survive.

Regarding your question in the title, I wouldn't be surprised if some platforms from that list you shared go under. Anyone that still has money on any of the platforms is simply asking for trouble.

From what is shown in this table, Coinbase made statistically the smallest layoffs.. 

BTW - From my research, Coinbase and USDC are the safest on the market right now. But of course everyone can have a different opinion.

It's not farfetched to think that there's some platforms that are also insolvent, but just currently not exposed.

I wouldn't make conclusions based solely off layoffs though, since exchanges tend to earn a lot less in bear markets in the first place — regardless if solvent or insolvent.

There are people in social media that have warned to be cautious with platforms that offer high APY and those platforms that have laid off employees from jobs in their companies.

Kraken, Coinbase, Crypto.com and Bybit did the biggest layoffs for exchanges this year according to the data in this spreadsheet which was created by Wublockchain.



Source https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1xUELawoXnmkJH2G_M8JIVtRbXI-Q9gB8jkdW4NmYWrI/htmlview