> Why does it seem like every single crypto company inevitably engages in shady business practices

It doesn’t sound like Binance is engaging in widespread sanctions evasion. They dropped their Iranian users. Seven users found a workaround. They were later caught and banned. Replace Binance with HSBC and it would be unsurprising, actually Binance did better, and the comments would be conspiracy theories about regulators being lax on violators.

This is stating the obvious, the HN community generally leans against blockchain. That coupled with negative news traveling further than positive news means that HN mostly sees negative stories, and comments on both positive and negative stories tend to skew negative.

Because the exchange business is winner-take-all, roughly, due to the beneficial nature of greater liquidity. This means if any competitor is shady, a race to the bottom begins. And crypto has many competitors who are willing to be shady. If you demand a passport scan from every new registered user, another exchange will grow faster and enjoy deeper liquidity. And this is essentially how Binance won the great exchange war, by turning a blind eye and having balls of steel. US-domiciled exchanges never had a chance (the fiat gateway market is a different niche).

Because normal people will click on crypto scams. They're scared of what they don't understand - are you aware of how many billions of dollars of fines every single major bank pays routinely?

Probably not, because that's boring and doesn't make headlines you see as often.

8 of the top 10 most penalized companies in the world are banks that have nothing to do with crypto.

I will place this here for context

"So rampant was the practice, prosecutors said, that on some days drug traffickers deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars at HSBC Mexico accounts. To speed things along, the criminals even designed “specially shaped boxes” that fit the size of teller windows at HSBC branches, according to the documents."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe-idUSBRE8BA05M2...

This is not to defend crypto, but making claims that crypto is somehow root of evil is silly. Anything that can be convenient for value transfer will be used by crimelord eventually - and people who will take cut of their money. Be it gold or diamonds, useless green papers or bit and bytes.

The risk of ignoring sanctions probably comes with a big premium. Indeed it's all fine until they get caught! The perfect fit for short term inflation of evaluation.

no harder, but slower! stake in a business is obviously slower yet. The ultimate scam is to just manufacture equity and do a pump and dump. any resemblance to an actual business is unintentional.