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Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait

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181–190 of 737 posts

Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait

#181
post #145
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the strait was open and freely navigable before trump bombed them. What Iran has learned from this is they don’t need sympathy, they need to exercise the leverage they do have, and there’s no way they’re ever going to willingly give that leverage up - they’ve seen what would happen.

Some idiot tore up the JCPOA, the only thing really preventing Iran from getting nukes. The lesson here is: get nukes

See Ukraine for another reason to have nukes.

Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait

#182
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats weak about doing the smart thing?

American destroyers and aircraft carriers have been chased away from the Strait multiple times now. Hilariously the USS George HW Bush had to go the long way around Africa rather than risk transiting the Bab El Mandeb after the Houthis defeated the US Navy last year.

> Hilariously the USS George HW Bush had to go the long way around Africa rather than risk transiting the Bab El Mandeb after the Houthis defeated the US Navy last year.

The ship went the long way around because why risk being attacked by missiles? It's less that the US Navy "was defeated", which itself is a plainly asinine comment which only serves a purpose of trying to incite others, and more so a practical safety concern.

But if you really want to argue that the US Navy was defeated, I would submit our next step should be to utilize nuclear weapons on Yemen and destroy the Houthis. That way you can't make these claims and we'll see who really is defeating who :)

Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait

#183

I’m not convinced that bitcoin is stable enough to use in insurance products. The currency volatility risk is too high to reasonably cover the covered losses which will need to be covered in some other currency to do things like replace boats etc.

They were charging 0BTC per ship before, so they come out ahead no matter the current value of the coin. They can change their fees by the day as well.

Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait

#184

Much of the post-WW2 American-led world order was founded partially on the United States using its military to keep international waters open. It would be quite stunning Iran defeated the united states in this sense. The military might is there, but this administration clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into and did not plan accordingly. (and does not have the will or public support to do so) The b…

Ironically the US has never ratified UNCLOS. The American professed interest in maintaining right of passage does not appear to require them to be held to the same standards. Also the Strait of Hormuz is an international strait not international waters. The entire strait lies within Iranian and Omani waters. Frankly it's a bit absurd to complain that your ships can't transit a country's waters while you bomb them.

No one owns anything or has the right to anything.

Everything is either what you hold by force, or have a friend who holds it by force for you.

Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait

#185

Much of the post-WW2 American-led world order was founded partially on the United States using its military to keep international waters open. It would be quite stunning Iran defeated the united states in this sense. The military might is there, but this administration clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into and did not plan accordingly. (and does not have the will or public support to do so) The b…

The power wasn't there in the first place if the administration couldn't defend Hormuz. It's all the same capital and resources that prior administrations had. The actual blunder was exposing that weakness to the world. We could have done nothing and reputation would've carried the idea that we could.

Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait

#186

Much of the post-WW2 American-led world order was founded partially on the United States using its military to keep international waters open. It would be quite stunning Iran defeated the united states in this sense. The military might is there, but this administration clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into and did not plan accordingly. (and does not have the will or public support to do so) The b…

I don't know enough about the current state of naval warfare but I've assumed this is related to the asymmetry that's emerged around protecting capital warships, especially in the scenario of a very narrow strait and a long enemy-controlled coastline. They can shoot relatively low-cost, short-range guided missiles from anywhere along the coast. Even if a warship stops the vast majority of them, only one has to get th…

> I don't know enough about the current state of naval warfare but I've assumed this is related to the asymmetry that's emerged around protecting capital warships, especially in the scenario of a very narrow strait and a long enemy-controlled coastline.

It's not the billion-dollar warships that transport oil, it's the much more fragile and unarmed tankers.

Even if the US Navy begins full escort duty, it can't remain on-station forever. What are shippers to do afterwards? One drone strike might cause a tanker to have a very bad day, yet it's extremely difficult to so permanently degrade an entire country that they become incapable of launching sporadic attacks.

Ultimately, the status of the Strait must be settled diplomatically, and the US and Iran are each betting that the other side will blink first.

Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait

#187
crypto insurance products have been very successful in the DeFi space for more than half a decade, a protocol you are using gets hacked and instead of whaling about it on hackernews the insurance policy you opened pays out immediately

there is a lot of examples on how to design it, and it doesn't really seem like this Iranian one for shipping is designed well if its just an insurance pool in bitcoin at all times

but if they are using the bitcoin blockchain to sign the insurance records of a policy and claim, and then the state administrator is acquiring bitcoin to pay out policies at time of claim, then that could work. that was one of the bullish cases theorized for bitcoin back in 2011, 2012, its a long list

Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they are not right now, otherwise we would have full news every day of it. Defense rockets for stuff like Patriot ran out, those systems are trivial to overwhelm and deplete in the age of cheap drones and become useless quickly. Same for the major airports, they keep working, people keep flying to the asia, albeit in less numbers.

>No they are not right now, otherwise we would have full news every day of it. Yesterday Iran stuck a nuclear plant with a drone, and launched them at other targets as well. And there is news on it even... https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-uae-nuclear-drones-71e7e5...

UAE is firing weapons at Iran's oil infrastructure.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-a-e-has-been-secretly-car...

Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait

#189
post #81
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sympathy gets you Gaza, West Bank and a few refugee camps. Geopolitics understands one language alone.

And what has this done to help Iran so far? Trump doesn't care about peoples opinions, US oil is making record profits thanks to the war so there wont be pushback from them, and Trump has 5 more months until midterms that is still plenty of time. The main thing it resulted in is the Europe led coalition that aims to ensure the strait will never get blocked again, so Iran can never play this card again, that will lose…

5 more months until midterms is plenty of time to do what exactly? Tell us that he won the war on Iran twice a day every, just like he has been doing for the last 2 months? The economic impact of this is just starting to be felt and will get increasingly painful for at least the remainder of the calendar year (depending on how much longer the straight stays closed). There is no mechanism for him to just sweep this under the rug. Perhaps you believe him every time he says he won, I think most us don't believe it and never will not matter how many times he repeats the lie.

"never get blocked again" just like when it was claimed by the U.S. it wouldn't be blocked in the first place, or that it would only be a few days...sure sure. I'm sure the IRGC is about to call the European and U.S. leaders and tell them how bigly they are and how scared of more bombing they are.

Re: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait

#190
post #67

Much of the post-WW2 American-led world order was founded partially on the United States using its military to keep international waters open. It would be quite stunning Iran defeated the united states in this sense. The military might is there, but this administration clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into and did not plan accordingly. (and does not have the will or public support to do so) The b…

> United States using its military to keep international waters open Being a little pedantic, as per my knowledge, the Strait of Hormuz is not “international waters”. It’s territorial waters belonging to Iran and Oman. AFAIK, Iran hasn’t ratified UNCLOS either, and claims it is not subject to it.

> It’s territorial waters belonging to Iran and Oman.

The trick is that it's still an 'international strait', or a segment of water that forms the only connection between two areas of high seas -- in this case the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The principle of freedom of navigation establishes that innocent traffic (civilian traffic, and even warships in peacetime) have a right to use the strait to go from one body of international water to the other.

Iran may claim that it doesn't have to abide by that right, but international law is never self-executing. One question to be resolved by this war is whether Iran will ultimately recognize the right to navigation in any settlement (and then choose to abide by said settlement).

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