[bena]

Madoff Securities was founded in the 60s and didn't collapse until 2008.

And you may say that Madoff Securities didn't start out as a Ponzi scheme, federal investigators believe that it took until the 70s for it to start. Madoff claims the scams didn't start until the 90s.

So, "being around forever" isn't evidence of lack of fraud.

[ipnon]

What gives confidence in Coinbase is that it’s an American company with no offshore subsidiary to perform these kinds of shady transfer shenanigans that have led to the demise of FTX and possibly Binance. No financial company is bulletproof but perhaps it can be said Coinbase only has as much risk as any American financial company. To be fair if this risk is less than your typical crypto darling it’s definitely non-zero.

[jachian]

Even moreso than Coinbase being an American company, it's a PUBLIC american company that is scrutinized by the rules of american exchanges. This makes it more transparent financially than any other exchange that you can hold your crypto at.

[bena]

Madoff Securities was an American company whose shady shenanigans were all contained within the US.

So the fact that Coinbase is entirely US based is also not a guarantee that it's not doing shady things.

And the implication DonHopkins was making is that every major actor in the crypto space is run by scam artists trying to defraud people of their money. There are no good actors.

It's not about the level of risk with regards to the structure of the company. It's about the people running it. And no manner of corporate structure is going to prevent people from simply lying. Which is what every fraud has to do at some point. By their very nature.

DonHopkins is saying since we can't trust the people running these companies, we can't trust these companies.

And the fact that they've been around for a while or are based solely in the US mean nothing when one of the largest financial scams ticked both of those boxes.

[vkou]

It's no guarantee, but it's a damn sight better than it's current competition.

[DonHopkins]

That's an awfully low bar.