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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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This is funny or sad ,depending on how you look at it

US Justice Dept Mulling Criminal Charges Against Binance Founder CZ: Report https://decrypt.co/116961/us-justice-dept-mulling-criminal-charges-against-binance-founder-cz-report

Imagine you're CZ. You just exposed one of the biggest fraudsters ever. And now the DOJ wants to investage...you. Meanwhile, the actual fraudster is still free, giving interviews. Yeah, the DOJ has been looking into binance for years, but it shows the unfairness of it all I guess.

What makes you think that CZ isn't himself a fraudster?

CZ sent texts to SBF complaining about him selling 250K of Tether and how it might cause a depeg. If Tether has a $60billion market cap and people redeem all the time and it wasn't fraudulent (as it almost certainly is) then why does CZ think $250K would seriously impact it?

Beyond that: why is he even texting a competitor about his specific trades?

Beyond even that: after what happened with FTX CZ and everyone else in the crypto space has an incentive to appear transparent, yet he refused to do an actual grown-up audit.

Instead, like FTX and Tether (again: two almost certainly fraudulent things) he basically circles back round to "take our word (or this random attestation that isn't an audit) for it". I believe this is cause he can't, just like SBF (who also reassured everyone hoping to avoid a bank run). I think it's the same scenario playing out in slow motion.

tl;dr: I think they're all crooks and CZ stabbed SBF mainly due to SBF trying to amass political power and throwing shots at Binance/CZ with it. It was imperial court intrigue, not altruism. I think they're all playing the same game (except maybe Coinbase, which iirc is public and thus regulated) so I'm not surprised that CZ was able to "expose" SBF. SBF's problem was just hubris in breaking the code among thieves.

This makes SBF look bad

Mr. Zhao was concerned that Mr. Bankman-Fried was orchestrating crypto trades that could send the industry into a meltdown. “Stop now, don’t cause more damage,” Mr. Zhao wrote in a group chat with Mr. Bankman-Fried and other crypto executives on Nov. 10. “The more damage you do now, the more jail time.”

Tether is not run by binance. "Tether Limited is owned by the Hong Kong-based company iFinex Inc., which also owns the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange. As of July 2022, Tether Limited has minted the USDT stablecoin on ten protocols and blockchains."

Tether is not run by binance.

No, but there seems to be incestuous, mutual relationships between these exchanges and Tether, just as these exchanges are trading each others coins (or apparently helping each other strategize on trades...)

CZ clearly thinks that Tether is necessary for the crypto space ( to prop up the price of bitcoin by pumping fradulent "backed" USDT), they are apparently in a mutually dependent relationship given his concerns.