Open source is starting to play itself out dramatically guys. Self-custody is getting easier with many companies and solutions available. The LN is developing quickly and isn't good for CEX businesses, because trading platforms and DEX's (like LNmarkets, Robosats, etc) are establishing themselves, and major apps (CashApp, Strike) are emerging.
The government is in attack mode.
Brian Armstrong's tweets and behavior are becoming more concerning. Today he flew to DC, begged for meetings with regulators, and sat in a cafeteria tweeting to government officials to stop by and talk to him if they can.
This is because he knows what I know after going through Coinbase's 10k financial reports: the company cannot remain solvent without staking and without unregulated access to DeFI. And if their stablecoin USDC faces any type of impairment or restrictions, then they'll need to access the debt market and will become a favorite WSB meme stock quickly. Also looking at Glassnode, bitcoin continues to relentlessly fall off exchanges. Coinbase couldn't even turn a profit at the height of the bull market when regulations were non-existent. And they wasted $1B on an NFT platform that does under $1k in volume weekly. It's over. Binance is in worse shape in my opinion because of the DOJ, and because their BNB liability can implode the company as fast as Luna or FTX went down. Kraken is better off, but not too far behind.
And no, don't trust that your funds are safe if you're foolish enough to hold funds on these platforms.
Things can move quickly. Get them the fuck off. Now. There's a final rash of bankruptcies coming, and they'll be bigger than the previous ones. None of these companies can survive a lower low in this bear market. Also none of them can consolidate with one another because of government scrutiny and their access to debt (via their own stables, or native tokens) is impaired. The only companies surviving this bear are bitcoin-only companies. Ones that do not carry any liability of "crypto". My go-to exchanges are the DEX's Robosats and Bisq, and the platforms CashApp and Swan. I keep 90% of my bitcoin in L1 cold storage. And the other 10% is on the LN, usually 4x leveraged when there's a large bitcoin decline using a platform like LNmarkets, or I'll arbitrage DEX's, or I'll sell the liquidity to other channels.
"Not your keys, not your coins."
—Gary Gensler, on MSNBC Friday, Feb 10th
goodfantastic intentions, but every time the founder gets asked hard questions, or served feedback, about the counterparty risk in his clearing/pricing architecture/model he simply pretends to not see/understand the question.