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Moving money internationally

bam.kalzumeus.com

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Re: Moving money internationally

#41

Post by fuoqi »

Galanwe wrote: post #32
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can easily bypass SWIFT restrictions and transact with the affected Russian banks directly “Easily” is the squishy bit here. If they’re settling in dollars, probably not, unless someone’s carting around paper dollars. (This has been done.) If they’re settling in rubles or yuan, for most definitions of “easily,” yes.

> If they’re settling in rubles or yuan, for most definitions of “easily,” yes. Completely agree with your comment, just wanted to add that the vast majority of international companies will require a settlement in DM currencies (mainly dollar). This ensures that the relative size of the deal stays stable, as these currencies are highly stable and not subject to domestic manipulation. For a deal to be settled in, say,…

>these currencies are highly stable

Can you truly call them stable with 7+% official inflation, negative real interest rates, and China owning 3+ trillion USD-nominated assets, which it probably will start to gradually sell in the wake of sanctions against the Central Bank of Russia?

Re: Moving money internationally

#42

Post by [deleted] »

panarky wrote: post #21
tomnipotent wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does he owe you something? Should he similarly find every other topic he's been wrong about and make sure to offer apologies and postmortems on his failures? The dude works at Stripe, not someplace influencing government or health policies.

He doesn't owe me anything. I'm just following his advice and reducing my confidence in his ability to reason about how the world works.

[deleted]

Re: Moving money internationally

#43

Post by patio11 »

capableweb wrote: post #2

Is it just me or is patio11 becoming more and more full of himself? I used to enjoy his writing a lot, but after joining Stripe it seems that something has changed. "I work for the Internet at Stripe" he says without further explanation. Unless "Internet at Stripe" is some internal Stripe group (then please explain what that is), he should have just written that he works at Stripe, full stop. Otherwise anyone could s…

It's wording that I use on Twitter and similar to convey a sort of nuanced problem: I do a bunch of things professionally. Some subset of those things are work that is traditionally done in industry, and which industry has very simple scripts for, and which would be adequately explained by "$TITLE at Stripe" if I had anything like a legible title.

But I'm also in that vague sphere that is often called "public intellectuals" despite not being in a line of work that traditionally contributes public intellectuals. I don't work for a newspaper, though my writing has run in newspapers. I am not a tenured professor, but some tenured professors seem to think I occasionally understand and explain things worth understanding and explaining.

This is further complicated by "That public intellectual thing is something that is expected of me but in the way that a university expects a professor to conduct scholarship without endorsing all conclusions of it, not like a company expects publicly visible employees to stay relentlessly on-message." And by the fact that everyone expects me to, at some point in the future, continue doing much the same thing while not sitting in the same seat I'm currently sitting in.

That is what I mean by "works for the Internet." Which feels sort of self indulgent, and a bit long, to need to shove into every time I stamp out my disclaimer, so it is here rather than every time I need to stamp out my disclaimer.

Re: Moving money internationally

#44

Post by JumpCrisscross »

fuoqi wrote: post #41
Galanwe wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they’re settling in rubles or yuan, for most definitions of “easily,” yes. Completely agree with your comment, just wanted to add that the vast majority of international companies will require a settlement in DM currencies (mainly dollar). This ensures that the relative size of the deal stays stable, as these currencies are highly stable and not subject to domestic manipulation. For a deal to be settled in, say,…

>these currencies are highly stable Can you truly call them stable with 7+% official inflation, negative real interest rates, and China owning 3+ trillion USD-nominated assets, which it probably will start to gradually sell in the wake of sanctions against the Central Bank of Russia?

None of these factors, other than inflation, point to instability. With respect to inflation, that’s being directly addressed.

Compared to every other currency, historical and extant, the major trading currencies of the day are highly stable across multiples of even the longest transaction time frames. They aren’t good long-term stores of value because that’s not what they’re built for.

Re: Moving money internationally

#45

Post by [deleted] »

tomnipotent wrote: post #39
nawgz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This discussion itself is of nothing important. However, that doesn't preclude it from being a place where moral relativity exists and can be debated. I am not sure I understand your assumption that the importance of a claim or discussion is related to whether it can be morally judged.

Doesn't mean there's value to it. This is a perfect example of manufactured moral outrage, justified post-hoc. The onus is on the outrage to justify it, not on the accused to defend against it. In this context, someone was expecting another person to exhibit a particular response to earn redemption based on an absolutely benign incident. At a certain point, the yelling just becomes tedious and unproductive regardless…

[deleted]

Re: Moving money internationally

#46

Post by olegious »

netsharc wrote: post #27
paxys wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The transfer part is straightforward, but the hassle with crypto is usually trying to convert it to/from the local currency at either end.

Crypto is a planet-destroying ponzi-scheme, but in a collapsed economy like Russia, I wonder if everyone can just have virtual wallets where you can buy goods by sending the seller some "coins". Which is basically the WeChat payment system, or how the Brazilian Real got established: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-... We already just exchange "coins" electronically, but with the Visa or Ma…

As soon as I hear something like “planet destroying” within the crypto context, I stop reading because that tells me the person knows nothing about the current state of crypto.

Re: Moving money internationally

#47

Post by pdonis »

rootusrootus wrote: post #30
toast0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can have a 'power of attorney' without being a lawyer. I think there's some of the difference there.

IIRC the 'attorney' in 'power of attorney' is a one-off that doesn't really have any relationship to contemporary use of the term.

I think actually it does: the original meaning of "attorney" was someone who was appointed to act for you or on your behalf. An attorney at law does that when you need legal representation. Someone with a power of attorney does that in other areas, such as finances.

Re: Moving money internationally

#48

Post by im3w1l »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #25
paxys wrote: post #11

This is a great overview. They seem to be implying that banks that are otherwise not required to abide by sanctions (say, one located in China) can easily bypass SWIFT restrictions and transact with the affected Russian banks directly. How true is this part in practice? I'm going to ignore the last bit since that is tangential to the topic and ripe for starting a flame war.

> can easily bypass SWIFT restrictions and transact with the affected Russian banks directly “Easily” is the squishy bit here. If they’re settling in dollars, probably not, unless someone’s carting around paper dollars. (This has been done.) If they’re settling in rubles or yuan, for most definitions of “easily,” yes.

What about just... not settling. Like instead, just keep track of which sides owes the other how many dollars, and ensure it doesn't get crazy imbalanced. Or very similarly transact in dollar denominated Chinese/Russian issued bonds.

Re: Moving money internationally

#49

Post by barry-cotter »

capableweb wrote: post #2

Is it just me or is patio11 becoming more and more full of himself? I used to enjoy his writing a lot, but after joining Stripe it seems that something has changed. "I work for the Internet at Stripe" he says without further explanation. Unless "Internet at Stripe" is some internal Stripe group (then please explain what that is), he should have just written that he works at Stripe, full stop. Otherwise anyone could s…

The audience he is aiming at is less judgmental people. If you believe that what you do is consequential you can say that. Obviously if you think your work is basically meaningless you won't talk like you care about it and think that it's important. Adding caveats and explanations that show you're not actually attempting to usurp social status some people may think you're not entitled to can be instrumentally useful but you can also just not engage with these people if you don't need to or you don't find it worth the cost. You don't always need to genuflect to your betters. Sometimes you can just baldly state who you are and what you believe in.

Re: Moving money internationally

#50

Post by ipaddr »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #23
capableweb wrote: post #2

Is it just me or is patio11 becoming more and more full of himself? I used to enjoy his writing a lot, but after joining Stripe it seems that something has changed. "I work for the Internet at Stripe" he says without further explanation. Unless "Internet at Stripe" is some internal Stripe group (then please explain what that is), he should have just written that he works at Stripe, full stop. Otherwise anyone could s…

I don't even understand what this criticism means. Does joking about his job title somehow mean he's full of himself? Would it be better if he said "Individual Contributor, Content & Communications at Stripe"? Some people think its arrogant to state your full job title too, like "what gives them the right to presume I care about their job so much?" or something? IDK, i genuinely don't understand but would like to.. E…

The impression is of self importance. The way it is stated it gives the impression he works at a company that allows the internet to exist.

It reminds me of a time when stripe was the underdog against paypal and everyone championed them. Fast forward we have thought leaders from stripe thinking they work at the internet. Even paypal never pretended that. By replacing paypal with stripe did we end up with a worse paypal?

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