The entire finance industry will repeat this quote for a thousand years

[anotherpaulg]

The quote: As Binance's CCO bluntly admitted to another Binance compliance officer in December 2018, "we are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro."

[quesera]

I love that he held back on the word "fucking", but leaned fully in to the explicit confession of criminal activity.

That's some short-term thinking there!

[mech987987]

He might be able to use the defense of "they did the unlicensed securities operations against every piece of advice I gave them". If he tried to stop it but was unable that could be a legitimate defense.

[TradingPlaces]

Violations of the Stringer Bell Rule will always get my attention.

https://youtu.be/Ly82nabRRYc?t=75

[DonsDiscountGas]

Classic middle-management. Tell employees to follow Roberts Rules and then get mad when they do.

[aaronbrethorst]

One of the first (and best) pieces of advice I ever received upon joining the industry was to never send an email that I wouldn't be willing to see published on the front page of The NY Times.

[highstep]

and yet you're willing to admit to your shady style on hn and describe that style as "best". its no wonder your industry is looked upon with disgust.

[nologic01]

A thousand years is a lot of time for an industry that has practically forgotten its death-and-resurrection experience of just fifteen years ago.

One thing is for sure: Technology will ensure that the fine art of relieving "suckers" from their monetary assets will reach ever higher levels of sophistication.

[phone[phone]]

Calling the 2008 financial crisis a "death-and-resurrection experience" is a bit hyperbolic. Nobody important went to jail, the banks got bailed out after a couple of them merged, and the bankers still got their bonuses.

The only people that got fucked were the customers. The financiers got their just fine.

[hirundo]

I was pissed a few years ago when I tried to open a Binance account, but was utterly unable to convince the site that I was me. I moved on and never did get around to making a crypto investment.

In retrospect it might have been my best UX interaction ever.

[latency-guy2]

Is there any context around the quote? As far as I can tell, it's just been the SEC filing here against Binance and the earlier charges against Lim.

[ElfinTrousers]

Someone violated Bell's Principle (take no notes when conducting an alleged criminal goddamn conspiracy).

[anyoneamous]

I imagine I'm not the only person who tried to figure out how a Bell inequality was relevant here for a hot second.

[lordnacho]

For context. Warning, N-word is used.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly82nabRRYc

[asah]

sigh - the "lesson" finance industry folks are learning, is to communicate by encrypted personal apps.

[kasey_junk]

One of the first lessons you learn in finance is that if you get caught using personal apps (encrypted or not) for work product, you are at best fired but also potentially prosecuted.

It turns out finance regulators have heard about WhatsApp and will take it out on your firm if you use it.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3675289/16-wall-street...

[snake_doc]

Eh no? There’s increasing SEC enforcement discretion to require record keeping for all communications, including encrypted apps. To the tune of billions of dollars of fines…

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/wall-stre...

[pjc50]

The relationship between encrypted personal apps and legal discovery is .. interesting. The UK government seems to have taken to using Whatsapp for this purpose, along with conveniently "losing" or factory resetting phones that might have evidence that would be relevant to a public inquiry.

[compiler-guy]

Encrypted data is just as easily subpoened as unencrypted data. Subpoenas come in the form of "give us everything related to X."

In case of highly-relevant info mixed with other non-relevant, but highly-confidential information, some courts allow a trusted third-party to see the documents and use their judgement what to submit to the court as part of the subpoena.

"But courts won't know what is in the encrypted info, so can't subpoena it, and you can't get in trouble over that." doesn't work. They order you to hand everything over. If you decline, and the opposing party convinces someone on your side to cooperate, you are in trouble.

If you decide not to turn something over, you get a nice stint in contempt-of-court land, which may include some all-expense paid nights at a not-so-nice hotel.

[hef19898]

Regulated finance is already in hot water for the simple fact of using encrypted personal appsnfor communication, even if that communication isn't hinting at crimes.

Traditional finance already knows what not to put in writing at all. Some crypto bro amateurs just gave their compliance training people a ton of funny quotes to work with.

[bushbaba]

Lesson is to not put incriminating statements over logged (electronic) mediums. That’s the type of comment you state f2f.

[bee_rider]

This would be an awesome lesson for them to learn, if they get confident in their encrypted comms, they might start writing what they really say behind closed doors. Then, when the prosecution flips one, we’ll get some real juicy stuff.

[rchaud]

Blackberries weren't called Crackberries because people were sending each other funny emails. they were sending encrypted chat via BBM years before iMessage took off.

[lost_tourist]

probably want to set those convos to expire after a week (or even 24hrs) or so, no?

[ornornor]

https://nitter.net/patio11/status/1665759607153893381

[rapnie]

This is the case where I first checked the submission before the comments to see if it was Gordon Gecko's "Greed is Good" quote. Damn. I was wrong.

[paddw]

To be fair, I don't think anyone anticipated the scale (and thus scrutiny) Binance would achieve circa 2018. Still Incredibly Stupid.

[8organicbits]

The market seems to think this is no big deal? Coinbase is down ~15% on the news of the lawsuit. I expected something larger.

[lesuorac]

"The entire finance industry will repeat this quote for a thousand years as an example of Things To Not Put In Writing during employee training."

Am I the only one noticing that the quote complains about them putting it in writing and not actually doing it? Like the industry is more focused on avoiding logging your crimes and not actually committing crimes?

[kristjansson]

“Don’t do crimes” is presumably already part of the training? This episode will stand forever as evidence that, regardless of whether you’re doing anything wrong, writing down an sentence that nakedly says your are is a Bad Idea. If you’re in the wrong, defending yourself just got a lot harder. If you weren’t actually in the wrong now you’ve created something you’ll have to defend yourself from.

[CoastalCoder]

I'm guessing the issue is that ot shows intent. Not sure if that matters for civil liability, but IIUC it can matter in criminal law.

[jdlshore]

patio11 has been calling out crypto fraud for a long time. You’re not noticing anything; you’re extrapolating incorrectly.

[s1artibartfast]

I think you're missing the intent of the quote here entirely. It isn't complaining nor does one tweet mean it is the focus of an entire industry.

I'm honestly curious how people jump to such conclusions

[potatototoo99]

Some guy on twitter is not "the industry".

[tomhoward]

Patrick has consistently been highly critical of the entire cryptocurrency industry for shady practices over many years. His condemnation for their breaches in this case is a given.

[tootie]

It's been said that a cultural artifact of the pandemic era was "oversharing". People just being incredibly candid and loose with their personal feelings. And it's just bonkers how that has played out in the legal arena. I'm thinking in particular of the Dominion lawsuit against Fox where they just had all those texts admitting in completely uncoded direct language that they were lying on purpose.

[adql]

[x] doubt

[blitzar]

Bro.

[ElfinTrousers]

I see huge meme potential in the statement "we are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro". What do you say, should we make this a Thing?

[lost_tourist]

You make memes on 4chan and then let them float up through 4chan->reddit->tiktok->youtube->facebook->email pipeline

[welfare]

Is Reddit offline today?

[WinstonSmith84]

So that's very curious, not really the private exchange between 2 high level executive, but rather how that exchange ended up at the SEC... The SEC doesn't tell how they acquired this quote, nor even whether it's a legitimate quote at all. We all believe the SEC is not gonna lie, right? Well, then that let us with 2 options: the executive cooperated with the SEC (huh, how and why? was he threatened or was he offered a better paycheck?), or they have some spying tools (also weird..). Any other option?

[mnd999]

Subpoenaed all their emails and chat logs most likely. They’re the SEC, they have these kinds of powers.

[soared]

The quote was almost certainly in a slack log that was obtained via search warrant by the sec.

[loeg]

> The SEC doesn't tell how they acquired this quote, nor even whether it's a legitimate quote at all.

The SEC would not fabricate a quote like this, no, and it's very weird that you're suggesting they might.