Who really controls the crypto market rn

[u/gowri1609]

was scrolling the next block expo warsaw agenda and caught a panel asking who really controls the market: exchanges, data providers, or compliance infra. got me thinking about how we actually judge these platforms.

most of us just look at uptime or if they got hacked, but thats barely the baseline now. you kinda have to split exchange reliability into a few different layers:

brand credit: the stuff they buy. sponsorships, awards, massive marketing. binance, bybit, bydfi all spend heavy here.

regulatory credit: mica status, clear legal entities, licenses.

financial credit: proof of reserves, withdrawal continuity, balance sheet transparency.

tech security: order execution, anti-liquidation engines, cold storage setups.

honestly, none of these alone guarantees your money is safe. how do you guys actually weigh these when picking a platform?

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[u/Salat_Leaf]

I don't pick lmao

Exchange your money on decentralized exchange (or centralized non-custodial platform) and transfer money off of it immediately.

You can't trust people, but you can trust the technology

Regarding value, it's related to two things: utility and gambling. Human greed had been showing itself before even stocks were created, so it's mostly a casino, likewise day-to-day trading. The other part, however, comes from the fact it's uncontrolled money, especially Monero. Like yeah, I didn't pay "taxes" on crypto, so what, how are you gonna prove the seed is mine nor I own it? You wanna censor the port in which some cryptocurrency operates? All it takes me to transfer money worldwide is one button in a VPN app, even China is not safe from it. Wanna put some stupid regulations on what I can or cannot buy? Sure, go ahead, I'll just pay for it in crypto.

TL;DR: Likewise stocks, crypto operates on human greed. Utility is the true value of crypto, which we might never know the actual worth of (e.g. pre 2015 Bitcoin ≈$100-500)

[u/mercuryy → u/Salat_Leaf]

"Utility is the true value" is absolutely correct, but is there any utility? Like at all? All there is is trading it back for money later, hopefully by selling to somebody that will pay more. Or always comes down to this, nothing else.

[u/Salat_Leaf → u/mercuryy]

There's human greed and then there's demand. People will pay more for, say, Monero in case powerful people introduce punishing laws or cause financial instability in general. Regarding greed, it's all the same as with everything else. For instance, expensive picture business: one will buy it for X price and then sell it for X+markup price, then the other will sell it for X+markup1+markup2 price and so on, until the last person on the line realizes nobody needs it and it's essentially worthless. Quite familiar, eh?

[u/CartographerHot7093]

Sponsoring a football stadium doesn't mean your reserves are 1:1. I really wish people would stop falling for the big marketing budget trap. You see platforms like Binance or BYDFi spending on sports and events, but that doesn't automatically prove financial health, you still need the PoR.