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United Kingdom Bitcoin

Binance Halts UK Customer Deposits and Withdrawals (cnbc.com) 48

On Monday, Binance said it would suspend withdrawals and deposits for anybody using UK currency. The news came after the world's largest crypto exchange's banking partner in the UK, Paysafe, said it was abandoning crypto, at least as far as Binance was concerned. Gizmodo reports: In a statement to Gizmodo, a Paysafe spokesperson said that it was "too challenging" to offer its embedded wallet cryptocurrency services to UK customers because of the regulatory atmosphere in the UK. Paysafe is based in London, and said this decision was "taken in an abundance of caution." Paysafe did not clarify whether it was abandoning crypto altogether, or just in its partnership with Binance. Paysafe called its UK portion of its crypto business "small" but clarified it was still working with Binance elsewhere in Europe and in Latin America.

Binance suspended withdrawals and deposits for any new customers using British pounds late on Monday, and according to Bloomberg the crypto exchange plans to suspend all GBP transactions for all customers starting May 22. The company is reportedly working to find "an alternative solution" to again allow customers to trade GBP for crypto.

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Binance Halts UK Customer Deposits and Withdrawals

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  • Wow! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @08:55PM (#63371569)

    Too crooked for London's regulatory environment. Even by crypto standards that's pretty impressive.

    • Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @09:16PM (#63371607)

      My first thought exactly. When the City isn't an appealing place for dodgy financial schemes anymore, you know the City has cleaned up its act at last, or your financial scheme is really, REALLY dodgy.

      Their very statement is a screaming advertisement to stay the hell away from cryptocurrencies.

      • My first thought exactly. When the City isn't an appealing place for dodgy financial schemes anymore, you know the City has cleaned up its act at last, or your financial scheme is really, REALLY dodgy.

        Their very statement is a screaming advertisement to stay the hell away from cryptocurrencies.

        The UK left the EU so that they wouldn't have to clean up their crooked and shady financial shenanigans. If Paysafe is still doing business in the EU but closing down in the UK because of 'regulations', something else is going on here.

        • You're right, so I wonder if Paysafe are saying they're still working in EU, but tomorrow the EU regulators are going to tell them that they're not.
        • Re:Wow! (Score:4, Interesting)

          by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @02:03AM (#63372021)
          Depends on how Paysafe has been acting inside the EU? Is it doing the same things it was doing in London, or has Paysafe been more cautious on the continent, since EU bureaucracy is a constant threat over their heads?

          Perhaps, you know, the effective threat of law actually does keep corporations from doing increasingly shadier shit?
          • by tsqr ( 808554 )

            Perhaps, you know, the effective threat of law actually does keep corporations from doing increasingly shadier shit?

            Or perhaps it just encourages shady corporations to come up with new bribery schemes?

        • by nagora ( 177841 )

          My first thought exactly. When the City isn't an appealing place for dodgy financial schemes anymore, you know the City has cleaned up its act at last, or your financial scheme is really, REALLY dodgy.

          Their very statement is a screaming advertisement to stay the hell away from cryptocurrencies.

          The UK left the EU so that they wouldn't have to clean up their crooked and shady financial shenanigans.

          Yeah, that's right. It was on the ballot paper and everything. I remember that and can produce a Stable Diffusion image to prove it too.

          • My first thought exactly. When the City isn't an appealing place for dodgy financial schemes anymore, you know the City has cleaned up its act at last, or your financial scheme is really, REALLY dodgy.

            Their very statement is a screaming advertisement to stay the hell away from cryptocurrencies.

            The UK left the EU so that they wouldn't have to clean up their crooked and shady financial shenanigans.

            Yeah, that's right. It was on the ballot paper and everything. I remember that and can produce a Stable Diffusion image to prove it too.

            Along with sovereignty, blue passports (made in Poland) and cheaper food!

            • by nagora ( 177841 )

              My first thought exactly. When the City isn't an appealing place for dodgy financial schemes anymore, you know the City has cleaned up its act at last, or your financial scheme is really, REALLY dodgy.

              Their very statement is a screaming advertisement to stay the hell away from cryptocurrencies.

              The UK left the EU so that they wouldn't have to clean up their crooked and shady financial shenanigans.

              Yeah, that's right. It was on the ballot paper and everything. I remember that and can produce a Stable Diffusion image to prove it too.

              Along with sovereignty, blue passports (made in Poland) and cheaper food!

              Well, we're doing better than Germany and France and we're miles ahead of Italy. I wonder how staying in the EU's worked out for Greece? Beaten into the ground for its "reckless" finances and then has to stand and watch the big three exceed the same rules by multiples of what they did and nothing happens to them. They're all in the same boat; but some of them have to stoke the boilers.

              We're well out of that shit.

              • Lower growth than Germany. Much lower than France.
                Much less stability than both. 5 PMs in 6 years.
                Lower functioning health service than both.
                Higher deficit than both.
                Higher inflation both.
                More shit in rivers than both.
                More humiliation by ex-footballers both.

                What are you doing better at?

                • by nagora ( 177841 )

                  Your numbers are out of date. Germany and France are in recession; indeed if it wasn't for funny accounting in Ireland the whole Eurozone would be in recession. UK is not. The ECB forecast was the other way around but of course they're both biased and incompetent, which is a bad combination.

                  Let's not get too excited, though. Everyone is suffering from Central Bank Groupthink that declares up to be down and then wonders why there is a problem with the economy.

                  And I'm not humiliated by Gary Lineker; the Torie

                  • by UpnAtom ( 551727 )

                    Hate to break your delusion but the UK is the only G7 country still below its 2019 GDP. GDP / person is falling like a stone.

                    https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy... [ons.gov.uk]

                    Germany has had one negative quarter in the last two years. Britain has had about 3. Britain is only technically not in recession.
                    Germany is the country most subject to Putin's gas war, and may enter a technical recession but it isn't yet. It is vastly richer than Britain where you can't even get a fucking ambulance if you're dying.

                    The French economy

                    • by nagora ( 177841 )

                      Hate to break your delusion but the UK is the only G7 country still below its 2019 GDP.

                      Germany recently revised its figures and it too is still below pre-pandemic GDP and it is shrinking fast due to the damage from the war.

                      10 year economic forecasts are nothing more than hot air; the world's greatest - or at least, best paid - economists have consistently failed to forecast even a quarter ahead accurately for at least half a century now. No one knows what the G7 will look like in 2032, least of all the French.

                    • by UpnAtom ( 551727 )

                      Germany recently revised its figures and it too is still below pre-pandemic GDP

                      Germany started off 2023, 0.8% above its 2019 GDP: So no matter what revision you think they made, you're flat out wrong and Brexshitland is the only one who can't get it up.

                      https://www.destatis.de/EN/Pre... [destatis.de]

        • The UK left the EU so that they wouldn't have to clean up their crooked and shady financial shenanigans. If Paysafe is still doing business in the EU but closing down in the UK because of 'regulations', something else is going on here.

          UK financial regulations are actually stricter than the EU's which is why Paris, Rome and Frankfurt haven't been able to take much if any business out of the UK because businesses prefer to do finance in London than the EU. The UK is still clearing the majority of worldwide Euro trades because the ECB lacks the core competencies to do so and to give the ECB those equivalent to the UK requires a change to the Treaty of the Functioning of the EU.

          • The UK left the EU so that they wouldn't have to clean up their crooked and shady financial shenanigans. If Paysafe is still doing business in the EU but closing down in the UK because of 'regulations', something else is going on here.

            UK financial regulations are actually stricter than the EU's which is why Paris, Rome and Frankfurt haven't been able to take much if any business out of the UK because businesses prefer to do finance in London than the EU. The UK is still clearing the majority of worldwide Euro trades because the ECB lacks the core competencies to do so and to give the ECB those equivalent to the UK requires a change to the Treaty of the Functioning of the EU.

            I guess its just on tax havens that the UK is especially corrupt then? It was when the EU were going to tighten up on those that Brexit became a thing.
            UK Conservative politicians seem to have a real thing for avoiding taxes and keeping money offshore.

          • What are you on about? The EU has already legislated that the swaps be moved to the EU by June 30, 2025. The UK's wishes are irrelevant.

            https://www.euronews.com/next/... [euronews.com]

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @09:24PM (#63371615)

    That is pretty much the last stage of an "orderly" collapse.

  • by Huitzil ( 7782388 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @09:59PM (#63371681)
    So with the news that web3 is dead I propose we skip web4 which was reserved for the metaverse and is also dead and go straight for web95 or webME or webx
    • Web7 was the best of the bunch.

      No ads and after being fully patched was pretty stable.

      Seriously though I did work at a web3 for a while. It was total bullshit. Just like web1 dot com era chewing through VC money but at least back then we were trying to build some sort of products and services in a new world we didn't understand. In web3 we just minted new coins of various types to swap for other coins.

      • Yes that sounds right. For a while it felt like decentralized finance could be a thing and then everything got centralized anyways. Problem is how all of those startups ended up producing 0 innovation.
        • Perhaps because the "innovation" promised by "all those startups" amounted to unregulated banks and currencies, which is no innovation at all.

          Certainly, "It's a great idea but nobody has managed to nail it" will have to be the line necessarily pushed by any future crypto scammers.

          • When all goes well, unregulated financial entities out-perform regulated ones (because there is a legitimate cost to the regulation). Of course when things go bad, the regulated entities survive and the unregulated ones go bankrupt. Still amazing that anybody tries to credibly argue against regulation or that they are taken seriously by anyone. If I ran a financial institution (I don't), I wouldn't need the government to tell me that I should manage things such that an economic downturn won't bankrupt me.
        • Yes that sounds right. For a while it felt like decentralized finance could be a thing and then everything got centralized anyways. Problem is how all of those startups ended up producing 0 innovation.

          Well, there will always be confidence schemes, and there will always be marks.

      • Web7 was the best of the bunch.

        No ads and after being fully patched was pretty stable.

        Seriously though I did work at a web3 for a while. It was total bullshit. Just like web1 dot com era chewing through VC money but at least back then we were trying to build some sort of products and services in a new world we didn't understand. In web3 we just minted new coins of various types to swap for other coins.

        Which of course is a decentralized way of "running the printing presses to create more money."

        I'll be impressed by crypto when they run a functioning system that never ever uses anything other than crypto. No dollars, rubles yuan, or piasters. Crypto for every single transaction public and private.

        • Pure crypto transactions? Lol, you're funny. Never say that to a crypto bro unless you want their head to explode. I think I'll try it on my nephew next time crypto comes up in conversation though. :-)

          The web3 world was fascinating. In web1 the developers at least could write code and the sysadmins could install an OS and so on. I met _very_ few web3 "technical" people who even knew what tcp/ip is or how block chain actually works or much of anything technical much less write code or install a router.

          • Pure crypto transactions? Lol, you're funny. Never say that to a crypto bro unless you want their head to explode. I think I'll try it on my nephew next time crypto comes up in conversation though. :-)

            Their heads would indeed explode. And it does show that they do realize it is a grift.

            The web3 world was fascinating. In web1 the developers at least could write code and the sysadmins could install an OS and so on. I met _very_ few web3 "technical" people who even knew what tcp/ip is or how block chain actually works or much of anything technical much less write code or install a router. They seemed to only klodge together sample code and provided block chain APIs until something happened that was kind of like what they wanted and called it good. And forget basic concepts like QA or product design or anything else that happens in a serious engineering environment.

            Yup, the second stage of the grift. Stage one is dreaming up the grift. Expound hot it is a can't lose thing. Do the initial setup, and make some big bucks. Second is the true believer, dumb numbnuts who keep the grift going for a while longer, while the originators sit back. The wild swings occur in part when the originators decide to convert some of that Monopoly money into real money.

            Then eventually even the idjits f

            • I laugh every time I see a post or blog about how bitcoin is up 50% from the recent 16k low.

              No. It is down from its 68k high.

              Their answer is always, "whatever, just HODL, it'll go back up way higher, it always has before!"

              Failure of basic investing rule. Past performance is not indicative of future success. But they don't understand that. My nephew just spew charts and graphs like the technical equities investors which is a straight violation of that concept. He has no idea what he's talking about but

              • I laugh every time I see a post or blog about how bitcoin is up 50% from the recent 16k low.

                No. It is down from its 68k high.

                Their answer is always, "whatever, just HODL, it'll go back up way higher, it always has before!"

                Failure of basic investing rule. Past performance is not indicative of future success. But they don't understand that. My nephew just spew charts and graphs like the technical equities investors which is a straight violation of that concept. He has no idea what he's talking about but is absolutely certain he can predict the future based on the past.

                Related item here. I was listening to an NPR investment program back before the subprime loan collapse. There was an "economics expert" guest who was bloviating about how the situation was a new paradigm, that everyone was going to be in debt, but it didn't matter. Real Estate was never going to fall, and when we wanted more money to buy things, we'd just keep refinancing our houses. What the unholy hot stinking taint of Beelzebub?

                Me being the geek I am, Here I am in the car, yelling at the radio "That e

                • I completely missed the yahoo million dollars for 250/month scam but the rest is super familiar.

                  I even had the same guy at work but slightly different story. He had made a killing on paper at his previous dot com when it IPO'd so he and his wife started buying cars and jewelry and fur and all sorts of shit. But he was still in his 6 month lockout period. He went from taking verrrry loudly on his phone with his finance guy to bankrupt before the 6 month period ended. And IIRC, he had to pay AMT or someth

    • by ihxo ( 16767 )

      who even came up with the term Web3 and tried to legitimize it?

      • Probably the same guys who came up with Winamp3.
      • Whoever noticed that www is three letters?
      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Well, as I first heard it, web3 was going to be a decentralized network. I had assumed that that meant somebody had come up with a way to scale mesh networks. Financial transactions weren't mentioned. The decentralized finance angle obviously fit into the idea, though, so it didn't cause my eyebrows to raise when I heard it as part of the package. Bitcoin, et seq. came along lager.

        Now as it happened, mesh networks still don't scale, so my original interpretation was wrong from the beginning. What I tho

  • So they will no longer transact on the pound. Is that a big deal? I mean, it'll be less convenient, but I assume people will be able to transact in other currencies and do their own exchanges.

  • but withdrawls? Isn't that just technically theft because you bet they just aren't going to leave that pot of money untouched or if cryptro un leveraged to make profit on their own behalf. .

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