You do have a point, but they could:
* do much fewer batches of consolidation if they want to // no need to do all in one day
* do partial consolidations together with the actual user withdrawals (that would be imho a smarter implementation).
* do much fewer batches of consolidation if they want to // no need to do all in one day
* do partial consolidations together with the actual user withdrawals (that would be imho a smarter implementation).
Playing devil's advocate (with a disclaimer that I know my client is worse than satan
)- we don't know how many coins they have that they can't actually spend, and we don't know if they are not scraping every satoshi at this point
- maybe the wallets are under different supervision? Actually, this does make a lot of sense to me as I would want to limit the access of every single individual.
Yeah, it's a stretch but this is the best I can come up with.
* what if, while we were cheering this year for how much bitcoin has left the exchanges in 2022, this was more due stealing/working on fractional reserve than user withdrawals? (I know, this may be a bit paranoid though).
Highly possible!
I've said like ten times this week, all these companies have costs to run, if there is no money flow they will need to either take loans or find "investors", when these options run out, you touch the honeypot and you promise yourself you will cover the losses tomorrow, then next month and so on.
To be honest, this is so messed up I don't know what will be good or bad for the ecosystem right now, I'm wondering if those morons have played with a fractional reserve, and they don't have our coins if a bulls run starts, we hit 100k and everyone rushes to sell and take the profit, will the inflow be able to cover the losses or they won't be able to buy back the coins and honor the deposit, triggering a drop worse than ever?
The other possibility, which I thought of while sitting in the bathroom, what if they are really so messed up on the back end they don't know how much money they can pull together.
They have a database that says we have X, they have wallet addresses that say they have Y, due to crap programming they really have Z. Because they have a bunch of addresses with dust that can't move and a bunch more with such small amounts that even at 1 sat / byte it just does not pay to move them.
They have done this before, the combining of a massive amounts of coins, and unless it is for security or audit reasons there is no point to do it except for manipulation or profit.
I will say that security and audit are both weak in my opinion. Security should be the same for 1 sat or 1000BTC
Audit should also not matter you either have the funds or you don't.
-Dave