211–220 of 496 posts
Russian citizens like me will be hit hardest, as usual. Large institutions and wealthy individuals will find another ways to transfer money. Costs of goods and services will rise.
> A cutoff from SWIFT may also have longer-term second-order effects on Bitcoin and non-fiat currencies. And remember that Bitcoin has a fascinating property here-- the more demand there is for transactions on it, the better it gets at scaling for something approaching SWIFT level of transactions. Oh wait I'm thinking of Bittorrent's scaling wrt popular torrents. Yeah, Bitcoin's ability to scale is complete shit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The inescapable fact is Germany intentionally put themselves in a position to be more dependent on Russian oil/gas with their shutdown of nuclear power. The previous US president made a point about how Germany's decision contradicts the purpose of NATO.[1] 1: https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1496917092351692810
There hasn't been a large change in imports of russian gas in Germany since the start of the Energiewende. [0] Gas is largely used for heating, electrical heating was never widespread and would not have been a viable alternative, even with keeping more nuclear power online, since it is uncompetititve without major subsidies. Anyway, gas consumption as a percentage of the total mix has been stable since before the sta…
U.S. is not a major importer of Russian energy. U.S. is a net exporter of natural gas.[2]. Foreign imports for energy fell 30% under the previous admin [1].
Russia only accounts for 6.6% of our foreign imports [1]. And foreign imports have become less important for the U.S. as it has become a net exporter of oil & gas [3].
Under previous admin, our natural gas exports doubled [2].
[1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M... [2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/imports-and-... [3] https://dailyenergyinsider.com/news/29194-united-states-expo... [4] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/macron-presents...
All these sanctions are a bit of the joke when you are dealing with an insane leader in a country without elections and sitting on top of a pile of reserves. And the west is not doing one thing that could actually actually make a difference -- cutting oil and gas export because the west thinks it'll be too expensive for the west. I feel these sanctions are still more of signalling, than actually doing something usefu…
The inescapable fact is Germany intentionally put themselves in a position to be more dependent on Russian oil/gas with their shutdown of nuclear power. The previous US president made a point about how Germany's decision contradicts the purpose of NATO.[1] 1: https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1496917092351692810
I think Putin means to hold out economically as long as possible and give other countries a chance to adopt this financial network and eventually get to a point where Russia doesn't need to play by the West's rules anymore, because sanctions will have a diminished effect.
I often wonder how money is stored. It can't be just a number on a computer in a bank, right? Otherwise some Russian bank could just increase that number to whatever they like. And say "Look, we own 100 Trillion USD. Now let's go shopping.". So I guess USD needs to be recognized by the US somehow? Could the US simply "void" all USD that are owned by Russia?
> It can't be just a number on a computer in a bank, right? It really is, but to answer your second question, it's important to consider *which* bank. There's reserves (i.e. balances of banks at the Federal Reserve) and bank deposits (which really are just numbers in banks' databases). Having an account at the former is effectively what makes numbers in the database of the latter "real USD". > Otherwise some Russian…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
I'm not satisfied at all with Europe response so far, but i might be missing something here. > can I rely on these people who threw out every treaty for a want of sleeping without a blanket? Why isn't the US sending troops? Because the risk of escalation and nukes are unacceptable. In case you forgot, Europe also has nuclear powers and the risk of escalation is higher if the EU as an organization openly acts on more…
He can lob a nuke right now, but he knows he will lose against the US.
He will retreat to avoid an even bigger defeat.
Thugs I fought in my teenage years, even when they brought a knife to the fight, when they are afraid of getting KOed, and humiliated in front of their peers, they wrap up, and leave.
They don't want to get beaten up, risk humiliation, and potentially committing murder at the same time.
Similarly, US can give Russian state 2 choices, a defeat with orderly surrender, or end like Yugoslavia, but 10 times worse.
> A cutoff from SWIFT may also have longer-term second-order effects on Bitcoin and non-fiat currencies. And remember that Bitcoin has a fascinating property here-- the more demand there is for transactions on it, the better it gets at scaling for something approaching SWIFT level of transactions. Oh wait I'm thinking of Bittorrent's scaling wrt popular torrents. Yeah, Bitcoin's ability to scale is complete shit.
Bitcoin's Lightning Network scales just fine, but based on your comment it doesn't look like you are interested in how Bitcoin works, instead wanting to jump on a bandwagon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What good will liking a tweet do? If you are pro-SWIFT-exclusion-of-Russia and live in Germany please contact your national representatives and let them know you're willing to bear some hardship so others don't have to.
Thanks I had quite a laugh reading your last sentence because most peers here in Berlin couldn't be bothered to report anything that doesn't directly impact them. For people living somewhere out rural shthole in West Germany perhaps might be triggered enough to file a report with the myriad of administrative concerns available to the spoiled citizen
> A cutoff from SWIFT may also have longer-term second-order effects on Bitcoin and non-fiat currencies. And remember that Bitcoin has a fascinating property here-- the more demand there is for transactions on it, the better it gets at scaling for something approaching SWIFT level of transactions. Oh wait I'm thinking of Bittorrent's scaling wrt popular torrents. Yeah, Bitcoin's ability to scale is complete shit.