> They claim to be an exchange, not a bank

They're liars. They are literally banks with all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits. They do fractional reserve banking with user deposits.

I'm not sure why you are ruling out a Ponzi scheme so quickly.

I don't think a Ponzi scheme adequately explains the problems with centralized cryptocurrency exchanges. They're just banks. There are plenty of scammers in this space, I just don't think Binance is one of them.

The problem is they leverage user deposits as gambling money. These corporations can't bear to watch a pile of money sitting around doing nothing while in their custody. They just need to loan it out.

Did anyone actually believe they weren't loaning out user funds? How were they funding their massive leverage programs? How were they loaning all that money to SBF's trading firm?