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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

#411

Post by myko »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #398
myko wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zelensky and Poroshenko are carrying rifles into battle as we are posting comments on this thread.

I find that hard to believe. do you have a reference?

They're both in Kyiv, during an interview earlier today Poroshenko asked the west for more help and talked about the steadfastness of his resistance group, which he is fighting with, during the interview he showed off his rifle:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/02/25/petro-poroshenko...

I recall seeing an image of Zelensky carrying a rifle and wearing tactical gear but can't find it, maybe I misremembered that. He is in Kyiv though, unless he shot this video and left immediately: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/world/europe/ukraine-zele...

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#412

Post by anonymoushn »

zrail wrote: post #406
anonymoushn wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

many PoS distributed slowish databases are currently deployed and process comparable transaction volume to credit card networks while emitting less carbon.

> process comparable transaction volume to credit card networks Please cite your sources. edit for people finding this later: Visa and MasterCard do on the order of one billion transactions per day combined. As far as I can tell, Ethereum (proof of work as of today) does about a million per day and Avalance (one of the top 3 proof of stake networks according to Wikipedia) does about a million per day. That's literall…

Visa's fact sheet[0] says that they processed about 6500 transactions per second on average for a recent 12-month period. A Solana dashboard[1] says that Solana processed about 2700 transactions per second on average for a recent period of a few hours.

If we would like to pick nits, we could say that the Visa transactions are not comparable to the Solana transactions because Solana transactions let users run complex programs that Visa does not, or that Solana transactions are not comparable to Visa transactions because nobody accepts SPL USDC and everyone pays out the nose to accept Visa, or that 2700 is a lot less than 6500, or that the 6500 number is misleading because the load should have peaks, and do we really know how much peak load Solana can handle, or that only about 1/3 of the Solana transactions are actual useful stuff for users and the rest are consensus messages. But my point is that these things are only "too slow compared to Visa" by a reasonably small factor now, like 6500 vs 900. Thanks.

0: https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/about-visa/documents/ab...

1: https://solanabeach.io/

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#413

Post by s1artibartfast »

myko wrote: post #411
s1artibartfast wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that hard to believe. do you have a reference?

They're both in Kyiv, during an interview earlier today Poroshenko asked the west for more help and talked about the steadfastness of his resistance group, which he is fighting with, during the interview he showed off his rifle: https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/02/25/petro-poroshenko... I recall seeing an image of Zelensky carrying a rifle and wearing tactical gear but can't find it, maybe I misremembered that.…

OK, that makes more sense. I guess you were just using figurative language. I believe that they are in Kyiv, and armed, and interacting with the troops. Fighting in battle would be a whole different story. It would certainly be brave, but unadvisable for Zelensky to be spending time in firefights instead of doing his job.

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#414

Post by chii »

lxgr wrote: post #331
adolph wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the linked regulation is not yet implemented. Further, your response to a question about a guarantee is regulation and reports? How does anyone know the reports of another central bank are true? When a central bank fakes numbers, what are the consequences, if any, and who adjudicates them? Basel III was agreed upon by the members of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in November 2010, and was sc…

Good point – I should have linked to the general concept instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_Accords > Further, your response to a question about a guarantee is regulation and reports? How does anyone know the reports of another central bank are true? When a central bank fakes numbers, what are the consequences, if any, and who adjudicates them? Money, especially fiat money, is a social construct. The confor…

> how a central bank report can even be "false"

they issued money to institutions or individuals, but pretended that they didn't in the reports, thus creating untraceable money without oversight.

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#415

Post by rmbyrro »

anonymoushn wrote: post #412
zrail wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> process comparable transaction volume to credit card networks Please cite your sources. edit for people finding this later: Visa and MasterCard do on the order of one billion transactions per day combined. As far as I can tell, Ethereum (proof of work as of today) does about a million per day and Avalance (one of the top 3 proof of stake networks according to Wikipedia) does about a million per day. That's literall…

Visa's fact sheet[0] says that they processed about 6500 transactions per second on average for a recent 12-month period. A Solana dashboard[1] says that Solana processed about 2700 transactions per second on average for a recent period of a few hours. If we would like to pick nits, we could say that the Visa transactions are not comparable to the Solana transactions because Solana transactions let users run complex…

Other networks can achieve up to 50,000 TPS nowadays. The thing is they're still not very mature, technology wise.

But it's been proven to be technically feasible to replace OldFi with blockchain, at least in terms of TPS.

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#416

Post by eunos »

chalst wrote: post #264
errantmind wrote: post #215

While, in principle, I support sanctions against Russia for their actions, I can't help but think they are using Ukraine as part of a larger economic game. Basically, they are forcing countries to take sides to some degree, and any country that wants to continue trading with Russia will have to adopt an alternative financial system/network, one that is not Dollar-centric like most of the world currently uses. I think…

I think this has things the wrong way around. Russia and China have for the last twenty years been trying to break free of the dollar-centric financial system with some degree of success: both countries have, for instance, built up large gold reserves. Now Russia is using that prior preparation to engage in old-fashioned revanchism. Rather than being a move in a bigger game, I think this is Russia cashing in its chip…

What? China is still biggest dollar forex out there.

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#417

Post by [deleted] »

anonporridge wrote: post #363
kasey_junk wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold and Silver are not “money”. Money is almost by definition based on authority mandated value. It’s true that lots of money exists outside of government decree but equating any commodity to be money redefines the term.

That's a dumb take. Money is whatever thing human society decides to collectively value in order to more easily trade goods and services across time and space. Money has been and continues to be many things, from government decreed currencies, to gold and silver, to cigarettes in prisons, to sacks of salt paid to Roman soldiers (etymology of 'salary'), to the colloquial "I owe you one". Money is just debt and favors…

[deleted]

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#418

Post by Terry_Roll »

sealthedeal wrote: post #257

CEO and co-founder of Routefusion here, a cross-border bank to bank payment API. We use the SWIFT network regularly. I can 100% confirm that all money in the world is just literally numbers, and it is balanced by the different federal reserve systems around the world to ensure no one can "create" money without notifying everyone. I guess if I was super cool I would do an AMA because this is the only thread that is re…

> I can 100% confirm that all money in the world is just literally numbers, and it is balanced by the different federal reserve systems around the world to ensure no one can "create" money without notifying everyone.

So how does this stack up when the CIA are purportedly printing their own currency? Or are the CIA and others exploiting the lack of security measures built into cash? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar#CIA

My understanding of money creation aka FIAT currency is banks/lenders deposit a small % with the central bank and can then create circa 90%+ of money out of thin air when someone takes on a loan. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...

https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/archive/starkey_banking#:....

With this being the case, then borrowing money not only demonstrates banks have more intelligence on people in order to decide whether to lend money or not, but it also benefits some in society more than others when considering credit rating agencies.

Edit: In other words, the amount of debt someone can take on is a sign of good behaviour and nothing more, a variation of monkeys being taught the concept of money and then scientists witnessing how monkeys traded their tokens, notably, females got cash for sex, males got cash for stuff the female wanted. Basic.

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#419

Post by dannyw »

Suncho wrote: post #392
JacobThreeThree wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can 100% confirm that all money in the world is just literally numbers, and it is balanced by the different federal reserve systems around the world to ensure no one can "create" money without notifying everyone. How does the system guarantee that nobody's creating money without notifying everyone? Furthermore, does the system guarantee that the central banks of each country are correctly adjusting their books in…

> How does the system guarantee that nobody's creating money without notifying everyone? This is a comment that's not related to SWIFT in particular. Every asset (including money) is generally someone else's liability. The money that we hold as an asset is the liability of a bank. Anyone can issue their own liabilities, but you can't create money that's a liability of someone else. For example, I can't go to my bank…

To be more specific, central banks are allowed to create money. Their liability is /dev/null. It's how they added trillions to their balance sheet during COVID.

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#420

Post by dannyw »

anonporridge wrote: post #315
kuprel wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like decentralized consensus in crypto world

With significantly more cost, complexity, obscurity, and gatekeeping.

The beauty of bitcoin is I can compile a open source program, and my own hardware will verify that all the rules of the blockchain have been followed, and no one has spent any funds that they don't have the crypto keys for.

I've been banned from one bank. I have friends who are sex workers who are partially debunked (sex work is legal in Australia, but PayPal doesn't care).

The truckers in Canada are also finding it out the hard way.

Are these edge cases? Perhaps. But they seriously affect the lives of people.

If millions of Russians suddenly find themselves without access to the international financial network, I have a feeling a lot less people will think "bitcoin has no value".

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