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A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
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Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#12[dead]
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#13Is there some sort of "tweet-chain combiner" extension? Can't think of a worse format to share a few sentences of text.
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#14>Russia has also been building an in-house system since 2014—the last time SWIFT cutoff was threatened—which may mean they are able to temper some of the impact a cutoff would have on its economy. If they're building a replacement, doesn't that also mean we should use "cut off SWIFT" now, rather than later when it'll be ineffective?
I'm way too far away from power on anything like this so I might be terribly wrong, but I imagine that cutting off SWIFT might convince other countries doing bad things to consider adhering to Russia's system, if they see the West willing to cut them off as well. You then get fragmentation and SWIFT losing some of its "soft power".
Russia already uses multiple alternative settlement systems with China, Iran, and few other buddies like Norko, and Belarus.
> You then get fragmentation and SWIFT losing some of its "soft power".
This already lost any power it had in 2014, because the threat of disconnection was wasted.
An honestly, EU lost its face now to talk "soft power." Every foreign head of state going to meet EU bureaucrats will now look at them, and think "can I rely on these people who threw out every treaty for a want of sleeping without a blanket?"
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#15Interestingly SWIFT was used to effectively depose a Head of State already, specifically Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. The Vatican's Bank was banned from the system and allowed back on after Benedict's resignation.
The lesson was not lost on Russia or China and they have been building an alternative system called BRICS.
Edit: Here's a contemporary source[1] from a "reputable" newspaper. It doesn't mention SWIFT by name but that's what it was. There were other "reputable" sources covering the story more explicitly back in 2013 as well, but web search's extreme recency bias leaves me unable to find them. Perhaps visit your local university library and they can help you search the periodicals.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/pope-struggled-t...
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#16bitcoin is going to be tricky. unless most miners are in russia they can be convinced to fork chains
1. Russia has been building up gold reserves, not crypo reserves 2. It's actually much harder than convincing 51% of miners that Russia is bad. You'll need to get them to agree on a list of addresses to freeze/sanction. Given that bitcoin addresses are pseudonymous, I'd imagine on agreeing on such a list would be politically impossible. Not to mention, how such action would affect trust in the network and the value o…
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Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#17bitcoin is going to be tricky. unless most miners are in russia they can be convinced to fork chains
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature
There are protocols that work around address banning
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#18IDK. In an interconnected global economy my sanction of you hurts you, but it hurts me as well. For example, the higher price of oil is good for Russia and OPEC, but not the rest of us.So where is the pain?
Certainly there are things that Russia has that the West needs. In addition, if Russians are generally used to less - and the West isn't - then again where is the pain? After two years of pandemic are most Americans up for this? Most importantly, how can this not influence the 2024 election?
Finally, I listened to (most of) Biden's speech yesterday and I was stunned by the irony. Per invasion Putin was effectively saying "Russia can't trust The West. They're out to get us" and Biden follows that with "Lookout Vlad...we're gonna put a hurting on Russia." Doesn't this validate Putin's narrative?
I understand...it's complicated. But it's also 2022, not 1952.
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#19bitcoin is going to be tricky. unless most miners are in russia they can be convinced to fork chains
Tell me you don't know how bitcoin works without telling me you don't know how bitcoin works.
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#20>Russia has also been building an in-house system since 2014—the last time SWIFT cutoff was threatened—which may mean they are able to temper some of the impact a cutoff would have on its economy. If they're building a replacement, doesn't that also mean we should use "cut off SWIFT" now, rather than later when it'll be ineffective?
> If they're building a replacement, doesn't that also mean we should use "cut off SWIFT" now, rather than later when it'll be ineffective?
The replacement is already functional.
In fact, Russia is not the only one having built a replacement to protect against the risk that SWIFT would be sanctioned: Europe has done it too with Instex: https://instex-europe.com/about-us/
SWIFT is a private company; those sanctions make it less competitive, and it is hard to play whack-a-mole with a worldwide market.
SWIFT, to be fair, is very convenient because of its standards and high connectivity. But if SWIFT was sanctioned today, banks can use literally any mechanism to route funds, from SPFS to email. What matters is the recursive existence of accounts held at banks that have accounts held at banks.