‘Binance Will Be Shut Down in 12 Months’ Warns Bitcoin SV’s Calvin Ayre
Binance may be the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, but its days are numbered, says Calvin Ayre. | Image: REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi
While head of Binance CZ (Changpeng Zhao) celebrated the recent launch of his exchange’s new staking features, the head of CoinGeek, Calvin Ayre, was less optimistic.
Ayre: Binance Is Illegal, Will Be Shut Down in 12 Months
Speaking to CCN.com, Bitcoin SV (BSV) supporter and financier Calvin Ayre said introducing the rewards system for Proof-of-Stake (PoS) coins was the latest move in Binance’s corrupt chess-game – one which sees CZ knowingly mislead traders and manipulate coin prices.
“CZ’s entire business model is based on a speculative casino of tokens that have zero value. They manipulate the token prices to harvest all the traders who are sold messages to do the opposite of what the house needs for its scams.”
According to Ayre, the hammer is set to fall on the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Just 12 months remain, according to the CoinGeek owner, before Binance will be shut down by one authority or another.
“It’s illegal and it will likely be shut down in the next 12 months.”
As a vocal supporter of BSV under the stewardship of Craig Wright, Ayre has reason to be frosty towards Binance. Earlier in the year, CZ decided to de-list BSV from the Binance exchange, which triggered a domino-effect of exchanges doing likewise.
Hard Forking Greivances
This was at a time when Bitcoin SV was in its nascent stages, fresh off the heels of a contentious hard-fork in November 2018. Losing the exposure afforded to it by the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange was viewed as a death-blow for BSV at the time.
Fast-forward six months and Bitcoin SV remains perched among the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap, while Binance has gone from strength to strength in the meantime.
However, Ayre thinks Binance amounts to little more than a casino, and that its patrons don’t realise the house was rigged against them from the start.
“All the tokens have the same intrinsic value; zero. They make them seem to be worth different amounts and then dump them to traders they lure in with their marketing. They are only pretending to be making profit on trading margin, they are really buying and selling to innocents who do not know this is all rigged against them.”
Such bold claims have become typical of Ayre, who has found a very suitable partner in the similarly outspoken Craig Wright.
The explosive comments may surprise those who know Binance only as the benevolent, charitable, philanthropic powerhouse it successfully presents itself as.
Binance: A Dark Past
However, it was not always so. Back in 2017, when Binance was an upstart cryptocurrency exchange fresh off the back of its own ICO, its public image wasn’t quite as clean cut.
Screenshots still exist of an exchange between DigiByte (DGB) community members and Binance Director of Business Development Ashley Ouyang, where the DigiByte team are openly extorted for the privilege of securing an exchange listing.
The matter was quietly forgotten in the daily news cycle, but after two years it has emerged once again. On September 20th, DigiByte founder Jared Tate revealed that during a video call with the Binance team, he was told to pay $300,000, as well as 3% of all DigiByte coins in order to finally get DGB listed.
DigiByte is a community driven project without the marketing budgets afforded by corporately funded cryptocurrencies. Where other projects may have just bit the bullet and paid the fees in the past, DigiByte has no choice but to make a public fuss.
Extortion Funds Are SAFU
Binance chief CZ has since brushed off Jared Tate’s comments in the manner expected of a busy CEO, for whom such silliness isn’t worth his time.
Yet if Binance really were to be shut down in 12 months, it would more likely be because of scammy practices like these, rather than those mentioned by Calvin Ayre.
DigiByte is currently listed on 80 cryptocurrency exchanges, and according to the team, not a single one of those demanded a listing fee – let alone 3% of the entire coin supply.
Question: How much of the world’s cryptocurrency supply is locked up in Binance’s private vaults? Extortion funds are SAFU.
Despite alarm-ringing from respected figures in the crypto space, the ability for Binance to arbitrarily decide the fate of cryptocurrency projects remains uncontested. Binance, helmed by its own “Little CZaer”, is too big to fail at this point, and such scandals appear to just bounce right off it.
Any hope of justice for the DigiBytes of this world may only be found in the fact that Binance, like Rome, will inevitably fall one day. How much damage is done – and how much money is extracted from powerless community projects in the meantime, remains to be seen.
End Game
As for Calvin Ayre, he foresees a radical change-up to the current cryptocurrency exchange landscape.
“The only legitimate exchange business using this technology will be those trading of utility, security, commodity or other types of tokens that are tied to real world value and then also connecting all of these to fiat on and off ramps.”
That would mean a culling of at least 95% of all altcoins currently listed on exchanges worldwide. Ayre sees the likes of CZ and Binance as obstacles blocking the pursuit of this ultimate goal.
“This is where this will all end up, but it’s a real shame so many innocents people scammers like CZ are going to damage as we evolve to this end game.”
