this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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Lol.
Bitcoin, the de-centralized currency where nobody has centralized control. Also... "Oops we sent you 2000 bitcoins by mistake, but due to our control of the exchange that never actually happened. Thx bye!"
What a fucking joke.
They weren't sent 2000 bitcoins to their private wallet. Their exchange accounts briefly showed that number. No actual change was made to the blockchain.
And yes, these exchanges are basically unsupervised and unregulated "banks" that people transfer their wealth too. Anyone using them is a moron and they should be illegal everywhere
I'd rather see them properly regulated rather than gone. But then again, many people prefer it to be a wild west.
In any case, custodial crypto accounts are here to stay, because not everyone trusts their own crypto storage over the exchange one, and properly securing your crypto in a non-custodial way takes some expenses, making it non-viable for small holders.
Institutional holders may also prefer custodial services to avoid accounting nightmare and shift insurance and other expenses.
If they're properly regulated, they just become banks and pretty much every benefit of crypto disappears. If they're unregulated, they're basically just a hive of scum and villainy, but you can probably use it most of the time without losing too much.
Personally, from a historical perspective, I find it deeply amusing that crypto bros are just reinventing the modern financial system from the ground up. It's a lot like people constantly reinventing worse versions of the apartment block and the train.
It's hilarious watching crypto bros singing the praises of the blockchain and its lack of regulation, only experience a scam and desperately try to introduce reforms.
The old adage that regulations are written in blood still applies, and they're basically speed running the history of financial regulation.
Kind of, except the traditional financial system doesn't have digital cash, which is where crypto currently steps in.
Any traditional digital wallet is custodial. Adding non-custodial options with immutable transactions could drag the investment away from a messy system that crypto is, and back into tradfi. But this won't happen, because governments and central banks love the control they have.
To be clear: control isn't necessarily bad, it allows to combat financial crime and corruption, keep the social system up and running, control inflation, efficiently manage funds etc.
But there is a legitimate (and illegitimate, too) demand for money that you can put into your own wallet and be the sole person to decide what to do with it, while enjoying the convenience of digital payments.
I don't understand how this would even work. Are exchanges just air numbers?
Yes. Actual crypto is stored on several (mostly cold) wallets, and what you see in your exchange account is just a number. When you withdraw crypto, it gets sent from one of the exchange's wallets.
But as long as it's on the exchange, your account is just a number on a paper, so to speak. This is important for the exchange's function though, as it allows you to trade crypto without paying chain commissions.
Any trading/swap operation is just a switch in paper numbers.
Either transactions are on chain, or they aren't.
Then how did they get them back in 35 minutes? I seriously thought that if they're gone, they're gone.
Well they are clearly not on chain then, right?
So this exchange is an air number type place then. That's what you're saying? Ig, good to know.
From what I understand, that's how a lot of financial exchanges work. Unless you do the work of buying and selling cryptocurrency directly from and to other holders yourself, or transfer it into your own crypto wallet, your assets only exist within the exchange's own systems.
Oh shit, that's why they say don't hold your assets there. Interesting.
As is your traditional bank.....
Seems that way. Kinda wild to have 2000 bitcoins floating around. Not sure I really understand whats going through a crypto enthusiasts brain to know this is still happening and still have any faith in the system whatsoever. Maybe the ledger is fine, but whatever this is, its not what its being presented as.