He said that the tariff is $1 per barrel of oil, adding that empty tankers can pass freely. “Once the email arrives and Iran completes its assessment, vessels are given a few seconds to pay in Bitcoin, ensuring they can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions,” Hosseini added.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I’m surprised Elon didn’t convince them to take the payments in Dogecoin…

  • yesman@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Bitcoin is for dodging sanctions and the influence America has over the international banking and payment systems. It’s also may shield third parties from sanctions the US may impose on those who transact with Iran.

  • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    How could that work? Doesn’t it take some time for a bitcoin transaction to get pulled into the chain?

      • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Doesn’t that require trust in the provider hosting the off chain transactions? And lightning transactions can get preempted by conflicting moves from a wallet, and invalidated? I’m no expert, but it seems like these big regular transactions would be targets for abuse.

        • ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip
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          1 month ago

          I mean, all the steps leading up to that take way more than a few seconds, including…getting the email. This seems like someone misspeaking or not understanding what’s going on…

    • commander@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      At the size of transactions they’d be doing, it’d probably be worth it to set a high fee so that it gets picked up and processed faster. Should still be peanuts compared to the value of cargo these tankers are carrying

    • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      It takes 10 minutes to get a single confirmation, but I’m assuming that it takes more than 10 minutes for a ship to transit this waterway, so it wouldn’t matter.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        1 month ago

        I don’t imagine trying to trick Iran out of their money is a particularly good long-term strategy anyway. Nothing unless you’re going to turn up in a new ship every time.

        • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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          1 month ago

          Something tells me the article doesn’t understand the way Bitcoin works. A transaction takes 10 minutes to clear on-chain, unless you’re using the lightning network, and the lightning network is fucking terrible, especially for high-value transactions like this. Because you can be rug-pulled. That and you can’t send high-value transactions on a lightning network because every link in the chain has to have the proper amount of liquidity to make that transaction occur.

  • commander@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I’d absolutely use crypto if it was more available in anything I’d want to pay for. So far it’s mostly just VPNs and donations

    • HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 month ago

      People tried that, it failed. It’s too volatile.

      It’s basically a way for people to think they are being sneaky and shit when it’s all trackable anyways.

        • HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 month ago

          To an extent it is but with enough resources and knowhow anything is traceable.

          It’s not always about direct traceability it’s the little bread crumbs that get left by everything. Nothing is absolute and everything we think is secure leaks like a mofo it’s just a matter of translating the data.

          • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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            1 month ago

            True, a place like Iran could keep it untraceable, although they would have to take some extra care in order to do so. But for your average person that’s not being looked at by a nation state, it is much easier to remain untraceable.

    • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      Yeah and writer has no idea what they are talking about. One of the core characteristics of Bitcoin is being publicly traceable

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        1 month ago

        I mean it doesn’t even matter that it is. It’s not a secret who the money is going to.

        The important part is that it can’t be reversed by a banking authority.

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      It’s easier for people to get Bitcoin, Iran could deal with the cleaning / mixing themselves after. This is already going to create friction so keeping it lower might help?

        • AxExRx@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          theres only like 6.5B usd worth of monero (compared to ~1Trilion BTC)

          At 20Milion barrels of oil (/ dolars if its $1 a barrel) a day, theyd own all the monero within a year, meaning theyd have told pretty actively be selling it back onto the market for another currency to keep a supply for shippers to use. Compared to BTC where they’d need 136 years of hoarding to accumulate it all

          • redsand@infosec.pub
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            1 month ago

            The huge demand spike would increase the value of any coins quite a bit so your napkin math doesn’t quite hold. It would basically make monero a new petro backed currency.

    • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      It’s all about whether Binance lets them cash out or not, but mixing within BRICS is sure to make it clean enough, as Binance getting/keeping sovereign clients is good for Binance, and not worth appeasing US BS to turn it away.

    • mlg@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Right? I was like dang you’re already half way there lol.

      The reason though is that they probably don’t want to discourage payments because I have seen businesses refuse to use Monero in ransomware attacks because their insurance agreement complicates payout on a fundamentally untraceable currency. Even if Bitcoin is technically decentralized, they can report the transaction and specific currency blocks to whatever federal agency is responsible for fraud.

      Still, why not offer both and put a 5% discount on Monero.

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I never even considered the insurance side there. But it is legit proof of delivery and it gives them at least a chance of recovery if someone fucks up cleaning them.

  • Kissaki@feddit.org
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    1 month ago

    “can’t be traced” - it’s a public blockchain, though. Everyone can see and trace transactions.

    When the money source is clear - it’s the shipping companies - you can trace their transactions.