The market isn't 'scary', this is a small stablecoin, and overall the crypto market is up today[0]. Also exchanges do have issues when the volume is much above the norm but this if anything happens as or more often when there's a lot of buying pressure. It's also much more of an issue with e.g. Coinbase than Binance. Binance are more likely to let you trade as you wish but temporarily disable withdraws while they move funds around.

0. https://www.coingecko.com/

> Binance are more likely to let you trade as you wish but temporarily disable withdraws while they move funds around

I was under the impression that providers being able to "temporarily disable withdrawals" [due to lack of liquidity, political pressure, or indeed any other reason] is one of the key things that crypto didn't suffer from?

On-chain sure. I am not sure why you'd expect guarantees off-chain. If you let me handle an asset for you instead of handling it yourself you are bound by how I operate, not just how the asset itself operates. Though I am also not sure why you'd think liquidity doesn't matter, that's neither here nor there.

> If you let me handle an asset for you instead of handling it yourself you are bound by how I operate, not just how the asset itself operates

Is it possible (just for example) to exchange fiat for crypto, or crypto for fiat, or indeed one crypto for another, without having to involve an "off-chain"* counterparty which comes with no guarantees?

In the fiat world it would appear one can do an exchange "old school" by going to a physical bank branch and exchanging [physical] fiat for fiat (USD to EUR or whatever) and not have to worry that the transaction is going to be halted half way through due to "temporary restrictions" leaving you unable to access your capital.

* I'm not sure I properly understand this phrase as you've used it

>Is it possible (just for example) to exchange fiat for crypto, or crypto for fiat, or indeed one crypto for another, without having to involve an "off-chain"* counterparty which comes with no guarantees?

Fiat exists inherently off-chain, so you can't not involve an off-chain as you put it, unless you count stablecoins (government or non-government issued) as fiat. Crypto for crypto or crypto for stablecoins you can exchange purely on-chain via DEXs.

>In the fiat world it would appear one can do an exchange "old school" by going to a physical bank branch and exchanging [physical] fiat for fiat (USD to EUR or whatever) and not have to worry that the transaction is going to be halted half way through due to "temporary restrictions" leaving you unable to access your capital.

When you involve a bank or brokerage or paypal you do face those same risks (but possibly to a lesser extent) with fiat.

> When you involve a bank or brokerage or paypal you do face those same risks (but possibly to a lesser extent) with fiat.

Aren't money exchange services fairly heavily regulated, for precisely this reason?

I'm asking specifically about unregulated counterparty risk. Which there seems to be quite a lot of in the grey area between crypto and, well, everything else that isn't pure crypto.

There actually is a p2p marketplace for buying and selling of crypto called Bisq. You don't need a third party wallet. All trades are from/to BTC. It's a native Java app and it relies on the Tor Network.

Yes, you can trade crypto assets on-chain with decentralized exchanges like uniswap, sushiswap etc. Of course you can not fiat-crypto trading on chain , but you can do USDT-crypto trading.

Folks, nothing has been said by the commenter that is non-factual. Please contribute to making HN a space of curiosity.

The commenter didn't even take a stand on crypto vs fiat. The market isn't scary. The stock market also halts trades when things get rough.

I think the point of criticism is (as alluded by the previous poster) that crypto (I can't believe that this term now means cryptocurrency, not cryptography) proponents like to say that they are different from traditional markets which are "corrupted" by those with power.

That said, I agree that this should be a point to debate not downvote.

Sorry, I meant "when the markets for coins Binance is heavily invested in/front running is scary".

This one is too small to have a larger effect on the market. Only 2% the size of Terra UST

Sorry, I saw on Coinmarketcap a market cap of around $4bn for DEI, which is about 25% of UST, or 2.5% of the entire USD stable coin "market" (while UST was about 10%). Is that what you meant?

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dei/

That market cap is inaccurate because it doesn't represent the true supply.

Note the red explanation marks that indicate how the data is inaccurate.

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/dei-token has a better estimate.

At peak, DEI was only around $100 million or so. Compared to roughly $20 billion for UST.

You could also look at the volume. UST frequently had $500 million of volume each day. DEI only had a couple million at best. (Volume is of course also a flawed metric and can be faked, but the lack of effort in faking volume is a signal in and of itself.)

Interesting. Coingecko is basically reporting #(float) * price for a coin, while Coinmarketcap is reporting #(minted) * price. Neither of which feel perfectly accurate for token pricing, but do seem like reasonable high and low endpoints, with the gecko version closer to an estimate of 'other peoples money' involved in the coin.

Coinmarketcap isn't reporting the minted numbers. Coinmarketcap is just reporting the theoretical maximum in the protocol. It's a really bad estimate.

Oh, wow, really? That's even worse.

I just checked coingecko and the highest market cap Dei ever had was barely over $100 million