Is this the major blunder that brought CZ down?????

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“Binance forgot to stick to CZ’s principles — now it owes billions”. So runs a headline this afternoon from Protos, a website that promises “informed crypto news”.

It alleges, in the light of the SEC charges against Changpeng Zhao – the former Binance chief executive who believes he lives in a simulation – that the exchange violated several of the tenets laid out in CZ’s Principles, laid out in a blog post last year.

There “are a number of points that are directly contradicted by Binance and CZ’s conduct over the past few years”, Protos says — pointing to anti-money-laundering failings and ethical lapses.

Alphaville was naturally curious as to just how big a hypocrite CZ turned out to be — but what we discovered was far darker.

The Principles, you see, run to some 6,000 words — and here’s what happens 4,381 words in:

The warning signs were there.