Crypto-crime exchange Binance’s highly public delisting of BSV may have been more performative than constative, at least, if one affiliate marketer’s site is any indication.
This past weekend, Veribit CEO Roy Murphy tweeted a curious phenomenon he’d observed on Coincodex, a crypto data site that tracks cryptocurrencies trading across hundreds of exchanges. Among the site’s top tokens by market cap is BSV, which, when one hovers one’s cursor over the ‘buy’ button, displays the helpful pop-up ‘Available on Binance.’
According to https://t.co/OmupXKVyZA BSV is available to purchase on Binance! https://t.co/Y6DcwnuD0s pic.twitter.com/ojmWpzH3zn
— Roy Murphy (@murphsicles) October 2, 2021
However, a check of Binance.com shows no BSV among the tokens available for trading. So, either the coders at Coincodex goofed or the average Binance customer lacks the secret handshake required to access the hidden wonders of BSV-based trading on the world’s biggest crypto bazaar.
Binance famously announced its decision to delist BSV in April 2019, following Binance owner Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao tweeting his annoyance with Craig Stephen Wright over the latter’s audacity in using the courts to protect his legal claim to Bitcoin’s legacy. But CZ has repeatedly demonstrated that (a) his public pronouncements don’t necessarily mirror his private actions, and (b) he’s not averse to doing an about-face when his ass is on the line.
Examples of the former include Binance.com’s public assurance that U.S. citizens were no longer welcome at the exchange, a claim that was exposed as beyond hollow this summer. In 2020, Binance was found to have been lying about a similar prohibition on customers from mainland China.
Examples of CZ’s ability to make a defensive 180-degree turn include Binance’s recent unveiling of a plan to establish a number of regional headquarters, which followed years of CZ declaring that Binance was effectively a phantom and that whatever safe house he was occupying at the moment was the company’s HQ.
That flip-flop was driven by CZ’s growing realization that his casual dismissal of traditional business models and middle-fingering of regulatory obligations wasn’t earning him any favors with authorities who’d never approved Binance operating within their borders. As more and more of these regulators put Binance on notice this summer, CZ could well imagine a future in which clearing customs became a major sweat over the sudden appearance of an Interpol Red Notice.
So, getting back to Binance’s ‘did they or didn’t they’ delisting of BSV… One can’t help but notice that the clock is rapidly counting down to the Florida court faceoff between Ira Kleiman and Dr. Craig Wright. While that trial doesn’t explicitly hinge on Wright’s identity as Bitcoin white paper author Satoshi Nakamoto, a Kleiman win would all but certify Wright’s claim on Satoshi’s stash of 1.1 million BTC, half of which could then be ordered transferred to Kleiman’s control.
Kleiman’s ensuing dump of hundreds of thousands of BTC tokens onto the market could cause the BTC-reliant elements of cryptoville to resemble an anthill that some teenage tyrant just kicked over for sport. Further evidence of Wright’s claim to the Satoshi mantle could also cause a surge in BSV interest by both rank-and-file and institutional investors.
So, CZ could just be proactively readying BSV contingency plans to protect Binance’s bottom line. After all, he’s been spouting faux homages to something called ‘proactive compliance’ for a while now. Only this time his precautions might not just be for show.
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