I know the article talks about "Binance's decline" rather than an attack, but that's just some of that good old conditioning/mental programming. What "decline"? As if Binance was just running business as usual and then suddenly for no apparent reason in came this "decline". Yeah, nah, Binance is being attacked, end of story. But anyways that's the take from this latest report and as interesting as the findings are, I couldn't help but (also) focus on an outrageous mind boggling sentence later on in the article, but before we get to that let's examine what's been going on in the world of CEXes:

"Small cryptocurrency exchanges rated as having higher levels of risk for customers have been the main winners from Binance’s hefty decline in market share in the five months since US regulators charged it with violating federal laws." Higher risk levels? Well that's reassuring....but wait, there's more: "exchanges that are rated by CCData as “top tier” due to them surpassing a “minimum threshold for acceptable risk” to customers, have suffered a fall in their collective market share from 80 per cent to about 68 per cent."

Wait a second, I thought the fascist capitalists were going after cryptos and exchanges to "protect" investors, are you telling me that was all 🐄💩 and they actually put them at a much greater risk by pushing them towards more dubious exchanges? Gosh, who would have thought.😂 So as you already guessed the SEC-Binance saga is what set all this off as the article itself even acknowledges: "The shifting landscape shows traders’ sensitivity to two lawsuits filed against Binance by US regulatory agencies this year. In March the Commodity Futures Trading Commission alleged it illegally accessed US customers."

And in comes the insanity: Binance illegally accessed US customers. Not US citizens chose to access Binance on what's presumably the world-wide web, no Binance is the one who accessed them. Like CZ was wandering the streets over there and handing out flyers for people to go visit Binance.com and trade crypto. Call me crazy, but I thought it was the world wide web because, you know, people from all over the world could access websites on the internets as some put it. There are exceptions yes, like certain countries who blocked certain websites to their citizens, but this is taking it one step further. This is not about visiting certain sites for the purpose of information or entertainment, this is about money. Your money to be precise, but we can now put "your" in sarcastic air quotes because I didn't realize US citizens were literal online prisoners. It's like they are adult children who are deemed to stupid to handle their own money and thus have to be bound to only parts of the online world allowed to them by their government. What's the conclusion here? It's your money but I am the decider, I decide what you spend it on and what not? If you're a US citizen and don't realize this is less of an attack on Binance but more of an attack on you, then I don't know what else to say to you.

And as if that's not despotic enough, the same people who want to dictate to their own citizens which crypto exchanges they can and can't use are also trying to enforce their totalitarianism abroad and dictate that Venezuelan or Iranian or Russian citizens can't access them either. I like this quote here from Tom Robinson “For a large portion of crypto traders, anonymity and the ability to exchange funds that may have come from a high risk source is more important than trading on an exchange with a reputation for compliance." Yeah no 💩, when you have scumbags trying to confiscate your crypto and cut you off solely because of your nationality. This "compliance" is the greatest risk. Who are the exchanges "complying" with and who's to say the demands and rules won't change and get even more restrictive? Who's to say tomorrow your nationality isn't next? Who's to say next week they won't try to do to XMR what they did to TORN? What if your favorite small/medium exchange starts "complying" next and implement KYC just because they have to now ban people from certain countries? Haven't we all lost then?

In closing, I actually don't think it's all that bad that other/smaller exchanges are doing a bit better. Binance did grow a lot bigger and faster than the rest and that isn't a good thing either right? Just be careful your exchange doesn't end up on this list while you had your crypto on it.