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Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire

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Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire

#271

Post by Incipient »

badc0ffee wrote: post #156
Incipient wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe that the toll will actually be paid - it would turn Iran into an INSANELY wealthy superpower and easily give them the funds to hugely increase their availability to fund groups like hezbollah etc.

I read that it could add up to $80 billion/year, at most.

According to Wikipedia their current budget is roughly 40bn usd, so it would triple their budget.

This fascination with ignoring that everyone in this disaster is the 'bad guy' (yeah including the US) is very bizarre.

Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire

#272

Post by littlecranky67 »

sunshine-o wrote: post #231
littlecranky67 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can issue any stablecoin via bitcoins taproot asset protocol. Transfer even over lightning. Thus it is uncensorable. USDT has this enabled.

Indeed, very interesting ! Apparently it is very recent [0] Now I am still wondering, does the taproot asset protocol make it really uncensorable? because on Ethereum an address can be blacklisted by Tether and the USDT frozen (through the ERC20 contract I believe). And I would be a bit surprise that Tether, which is more and more integrated and compliant with regulations, would start minting USDT on a system that do…

I am not deep enough into the tech complexity, but AFAIK the token on TAP is traceable by the owner, just as bitcoin is. While not on-chain, the proof file that the new owner gets during transfer includes the full history and lineage of that token.

I.e. the moment you want to exchange the stablecoin token for the underlying asset (being it fiat USD, gold or whatnot) the stablecoin issuer can refuse to do that exchange for whatever grounds they have - probably based on regulation. So if a sanctioned entity (russia, iran) owned that token before, it is in the history and the stablecoin issuer can refuse to swap.

BUT: Good luck tying the public keys to real-world entities like russian goverment. Other than on-chain with bitcoin, you would only revel the public key if you traded with that entity, and are part of the lineage. The keys are not revealed to the entire world.

Plus, this also does not prevent fungibility of the token, you can still transfer the token to whatever other wallet you like, selling it to someone who does not care/check if it is tainted.

Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire

#273

Post by littlecranky67 »

sunshine-o wrote: post #231
littlecranky67 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can issue any stablecoin via bitcoins taproot asset protocol. Transfer even over lightning. Thus it is uncensorable. USDT has this enabled.

Indeed, very interesting ! Apparently it is very recent [0] Now I am still wondering, does the taproot asset protocol make it really uncensorable? because on Ethereum an address can be blacklisted by Tether and the USDT frozen (through the ERC20 contract I believe). And I would be a bit surprise that Tether, which is more and more integrated and compliant with regulations, would start minting USDT on a system that do…

The whole thing is very recent, and the ecosystem is not very mature or developed (i.e. hardly any lightning wallet supports transfering taproot assets). But taproot was enabled in 2021, and Tether announced a taproot stablecoin as early as January 2025: https://tether.io/news/tether-brings-usdt-to-bitcoins-lightn...

Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire

#274

Post by mancerayder »

spaghetdefects wrote: post #238
bamboozled wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably for the actual innocent people who live in Israel , yes

Israel is a modern day Nazi Germany. I wouldn't call anyone there over the age of 18 "innocent".

[flagged]

Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire

#275

Post by MarsIronPI »

mancerayder wrote: post #274
spaghetdefects wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is a modern day Nazi Germany. I wouldn't call anyone there over the age of 18 "innocent".

[flagged]

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire

#276

Post by HWR_14 »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #267
HWR_14 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still thrown. I don't see how an after the fact penalty can work. Let's say I have 1 BTC. I buy something for 1 BTC on lightning network A. Simultaneously (within nanoseconds) I buy something for 1 BTC on lightning network B. I never plan to use BTC again (or if I do, I will use a different wallet, etc.) Do I just get two purchases? Is there a meta-network clearing house, and if so, why are there many disjoint ne…

Once you've allocated BTC, you cannot doublespend it elsewhere (well, you can try , but verification nodes will reject it so the blockchain will never accept ).

I get that once I allocate BTC on the main blockchain. I was trying to understand how I allocate BTC via the lightning network(s)

Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire

#277

Post by HWR_14 »

jenadine wrote: post #268
HWR_14 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still thrown. I don't see how an after the fact penalty can work. Let's say I have 1 BTC. I buy something for 1 BTC on lightning network A. Simultaneously (within nanoseconds) I buy something for 1 BTC on lightning network B. I never plan to use BTC again (or if I do, I will use a different wallet, etc.) Do I just get two purchases? Is there a meta-network clearing house, and if so, why are there many disjoint ne…

On the main chain, bitcoin transactions can have "scripts" that describes who and under what condition this money can be spent. You have to lock your bitcoin on the main chain in a script that shares the bitcoin between you, and another lightning network user (typically a hub) The trick is that a lightning transaction happen by signing transactions to the other party that changes the way the bitcoins are split, witho…

So I allocate my one BTC to lightning network A, so I can spend it there. I try to spend it on lightning network B and it rejects the spend because it's allocated to A in the main blockchain, even if I never spent it on A. There exists some mechanism for me to switch my bitcoin to B (by broadcasting on the main chain)... maybe? But then A needs to sign off that I don't have pending transactions?

Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire

#278

Post by gzread »

bodiekane wrote: post #228
deweller wrote: post #120

A "few seconds" to pay in bitcoin? So the captain is supposed to be watching for a response via email with his finger hovering over the pay button? Is the recipient address static? Surely they would use unique payment addresses if they have any hope of obfuscating payments. This all sounds more like a TV show script than an actual thought-out plan to me.

The payments are going to a government. They're not using bitcoin to hide the payments, they're using it because receiving USD or Euros or whatever would mean that a hostile government could seize the funds from the bank. The tracking is unique though. I don't know who had the $20 in my wallet before me or what series of payments it was a part of, but crypto has the curious property that over time, essentially all cr…

I thought they were using Chinese yuan. Bitcoin must be a fallback option for countries that haven't yet updated to the new global reserve currency.

Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire

#279

Post by sunshine-o »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #272
sunshine-o wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, very interesting ! Apparently it is very recent [0] Now I am still wondering, does the taproot asset protocol make it really uncensorable? because on Ethereum an address can be blacklisted by Tether and the USDT frozen (through the ERC20 contract I believe). And I would be a bit surprise that Tether, which is more and more integrated and compliant with regulations, would start minting USDT on a system that do…

I am not deep enough into the tech complexity, but AFAIK the token on TAP is traceable by the owner, just as bitcoin is. While not on-chain, the proof file that the new owner gets during transfer includes the full history and lineage of that token. I.e. the moment you want to exchange the stablecoin token for the underlying asset (being it fiat USD, gold or whatnot) the stablecoin issuer can refuse to do that exchang…

Thanks. Yeah I am a bit surprised how little information (or hard to find) there is about how they do it.

Also right now Tether do not declare any USDT minted or in circulation on Bitcoin on their "Transparency" page [0]

But once again this is very new...

- [0] https://tether.to/en/transparency/?tab=usdt

Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire

#280

Post by cmxch »

deweller wrote: post #120

A "few seconds" to pay in bitcoin? So the captain is supposed to be watching for a response via email with his finger hovering over the pay button? Is the recipient address static? Surely they would use unique payment addresses if they have any hope of obfuscating payments. This all sounds more like a TV show script than an actual thought-out plan to me.

Then what prevents the US from just seizing or sinking any vessel presumed to have paid up?
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