Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 496 posts

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

#461

Post by anonymoushn »

WanderPanda wrote: post #456
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…

With lightning you can have infinite tx per day while having final settlement. In contrast Visa and Mastercard have delayed settlement and operate on many layers of trust

With lightning you can send many txes per day to people who already have as much bitcoin as you want to send them, have their wallet online as you send them the funds, and regularly check in to contest fraudulent channel closes.

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

#463

Post by [deleted] »

redisman wrote: post #435
morelisp wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's... that's the point. We should not be paying them for gas. We should not be funding their war.

Germany shut down their nuclear plants and built a expensive pipeline from Russia to use nat gas instead. Why?! This mistake could be one of the biggest in EU in the 2020s

[deleted]

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

#464

Post by lmohseni »

anonporridge wrote: post #313
lxgr wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does the system guarantee that nobody's creating money without notifying everyone? Through a series of regulations regarding minimum liquidity/capital [1] and/or reserve [2] requirements. > Furthermore, does the system guarantee that the central banks of each country are correctly adjusting their books in consequence? By requiring them to periodically report on their assets and liabilities, checking for complia…

So it's all trust based? We have to trust that all the governments of the world, who pinky promised to follow the rules, aren't secretly cheating internally and reporting false numbers to everyone else?

Here’s the thing though: any one who works with code knows that you cannot trust code. Code is as tricky and ambiguous as the humans who write it.

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

#465

Post by lmohseni »

mvkel wrote: post #335
anonporridge wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's all trust based? We have to trust that all the governments of the world, who pinky promised to follow the rules, aren't secretly cheating internally and reporting false numbers to everyone else?

Yep! This is the fundamental "disruption" blockchain tech introduced. It doesn't require trust.

It requires trusting code instead of humans.

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

#466

Post by native_samples »

jollybean wrote: post #421
lxgr wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people say "revoking somebody's SWIFT access", I think they really mean putting them on national or international sanction/embargo lists that prohibit them from doing any kind of business with them (in particular, sending payments in their name or for their benefit), rather than actually, technically removing their SWIFT network access. Since SWIFT is not the only, but certainly the largest financial/interbank m…

I don't believe this is accurate. I don't think anyone would arbitrarily just ban all trade like that. And if that's what they did intend, that's what they would say and the consequences are much bigger. It's kind of a 'de facto' ban however, in that, it's hard to pay people otherwise. I'm sure a Swiss bank or two could immediately broker transactions 'by hand' though, that would be a pretty easy way around things. T…

Yes. This whole thing is just once more revealing the cluelessness of our political classes. SWIFT is just a messaging system with verified identities, some schemas and a bit of business logic on the side. It exists because wire transfers predate the internet, not because it's clever or actually critical infrastructure.

Disconnect Russian banks from SWIFT? OK, submit your SWIFT formatted messages to banks via this helpful REST API instead. The outcome is the same.

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

#467

Post by johannes1234321 »

PTcartelsLOL wrote: post #330
johannes1234321 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not only are first series euros still valid, but you can still exchange pre-Euro currencies for the original rate. The purpose of the new series is just to keep up with counterfeit money, to include newer security measures. But yes, countries in the world have revoked currencies from time to time.

No, you can't. They were only valid for 20 years, and 20 years have passed since 2002.

Shops aren't required to take the old local currencies anymore, but they can still be swapped.

Here for instances the information if the German Bundesbank, where you can still swap with the official rate of 1.95583 DM/€. https://www.bundesbank.de/de/aufgaben/bargeld/dm-banknoten-u... (Currently there is a restriction of in person service due to corona, but if you trust mail it works, else you have to wait for that Corona restriction to be lifted)

That exchange works without limits or anything.

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

#468

Post by JumpCrisscross »

civilized wrote: post #384
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does the system guarantee that nobody's creating money without notifying everyone? Simple answer is balanced books. Longer answer is public reporting and reconciliation. If a bank shows its Federal Reserve balance at X on its asset side and the Federal Reserve shows its bank balance at 0.9X on its liability side, that will raise issue on reconciliation. The system lazily evaluates, however, which makes it nimbl…

So, the bank can't flip a few bits in its databases and go "actually I have a quadrillion dollars now" because other people know how much money that bank should have based on transactions it has made? Do I have that right? Seriously I have wondered about this for decades. I don't know why this would be obvious to anyone.

> other people know how much money that bank should have based on transactions it has made?

Approximately. Everyone keeps a running total of their bilateral transactions. This summing and sharding reduces information. But it also decentralizes accountability in a robust way.

Add occasional audits (which allow trusted persons to evaluate the transaction record), and some of those parties' books (in the aggregate) being public record, thereby permitting every party (including third parties) to compare their books to theirs, and you get a system which tends towards accuracy.

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

#469

Post by stickfigure »

dmingod666 wrote: post #444
stickfigure wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when Putin threatens nuclear first strike unless the west removes sanctions, or abandons the baltic republics, what next? At some point you have to just call their bluff. Earlier is better than later. Putin himself knows that he'll be the first casualty in nuclear war, and I doubt very much that Putin's deputies would go along with a plan that results in the annihilation of the Russian people. He's playing a high…

What does 'call his bluff' translate to in this context? Not take the threat of a nuclear war seriously and engage with Russia militarily anyways as-if the threat didn't exist?

Yes. Use NATO air power to tip the scales in Ukraine. They seem to be doing pretty well by themselves, even just a little help may be enough.

Putin is gambling that the west is too cowardly to fight, and so far he's right. Hitler made the same gamble in 1936.

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

#470

Post by sealthedeal »

anonporridge wrote: post #313
lxgr wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does the system guarantee that nobody's creating money without notifying everyone? Through a series of regulations regarding minimum liquidity/capital [1] and/or reserve [2] requirements. > Furthermore, does the system guarantee that the central banks of each country are correctly adjusting their books in consequence? By requiring them to periodically report on their assets and liabilities, checking for complia…

So it's all trust based? We have to trust that all the governments of the world, who pinky promised to follow the rules, aren't secretly cheating internally and reporting false numbers to everyone else?

Yes, it’s all trust based. I.e. if some random bank in Iowa decides to just create $10,000,000 out of thin air, the Fed will eventually find out and then they would lose banking license, lots of penalties.

Same goes for countries. If a countries fed just creates new money out of no where and acts as if it’s always existed they risk everything. I.e. losing access to the global banking network, insane currency fluctuations, use your imagination.

The premise is the same though. Our entire financial system as it stands today is based off of trust with auditing oversight and harsh penalties for breaking that trust.

Post reply on HN