Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not like Iran plans to keep the Bitcoin. It’s just a way around sanctions.
Weren’t sanctions lifted last week?
Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire
71–80 of 300 posts
Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
TBF, Iran is saying an exorbitant price right now, but in reality they will need to balance their price with demand to bring in the maximum possible revenue. The toll may work out in the long run.
The problem is the fee has nothing material to do with the straight itself. There are no maintenance costs for the open sea. Coordination is also not a big concern, you can tell because previously ships were able to pass without incident and coordinate among themselves. Actually, this is extortion. Meaning that it is done under threat of violence. Worse yet, the US military may end up enforcing this, and collecting o…
I don't think this count as open sea. The rule is 12 miles from the coast (12 nautical miles btw, i don't know what it is in freedom units). i'm pretty sure the strait is narrower than that at the place where the toll is paid (if you count both side, i.e less than 24 miles Between Oman's peninsula i forgot the name of, and Hormuz/Qeshm islands).
So basically, Iran say "here, you have to pass through our or Oman's waters, we will let you, but please pay a toll for the derangement, that we will share with Oman."
Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire
#73I personally think is the US's Teutoburg Forest moment [1]. Rome was capable of rebuilding legions. After all, they'd done so historically (eg after the Battle of Cannae [2]) but Teutoburg really exposed the rot and dysfunction within the Rome. I personally believe this event will be a turning point in redefining the relationships with Europe, the Gulf states and Israel. Details on this deal are sketchy but it seems…
The point of crypto is to cut out the middleman, to bypass authoritarianism, to bypass censorship, to not have to trust anybody.
The US being able to just cut off people from the financial system is seen as very problematic by anyone outside the US.
Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire
#74”Hosseini said that each tanker must email authorities about its cargo, after which Iran will inform them of the toll to be paid in digital currencies. “He said that the tariff is $1 per barrel of oil, adding that empty tankers can pass freely. “‘Once the email arrives and Iran completes its assessment, vessels are given a few seconds to pay in bitcoin, ensuring they can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions,’…
Cannot get to the article, so: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran-warns-tankers-they... What is to stop the ships from lying ? I wonder if Iran will do spot check of some ships to prevent this. And will boarding ships cause Trump to have yet another breakdown ?
Because ship displacement is really hard to disguise? It's probably like trying to sneak your friend in to the movies under your overcoat.
Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the price can only increase. There is not much competition for Hormuz. If it is exorbitant now, it can only be more expensive later on. The demand for oil is not going to go down drastically for quite a few years. If there was another route, the oil would have found the way.
pipelines, railway, etc. had the US had any real plan to empower the Gulf states against Iran there would already be backup routes
Pipelines are incredibly vulnerable to being taken offline by an inexpensive long-range strike. You can't just put them in the middle of a war zone, especially when we (the US) have targeted that same type of infrastructure first.
Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire
#76I think this war will be the moment that historians mark as the death of Pax Americana. The US failed to change the Iranian regime, failed to open the strait, and now a previously international waterway will be tolled in a currency other than the dollar. I wish it need not have happened in my time
TBF, Iran is saying an exorbitant price right now, but in reality they will need to balance their price with demand to bring in the maximum possible revenue. The toll may work out in the long run.
Very Large Crude Carriers carry ~2 million barrels of oil. Ultra Large Crude Carriers double that. If oil went down to $50/Bbl, that $2 million fee amounts to a ~2% tax per ship, given their cargo capacity. It's not particularly exorbitant, especially given that the entire reason they proposed this toll was to fund their rebuilding efforts (Americans and Israelis did a lot of damage that's been under-reported and ignored)
This conflict has been an interesting case of watching mass hysteria interact with propaganda in the newform, rapid pace of media that exists in the internet age. The amount of wild conjecture, speculation, misinformation is the most extreme I've ever seen it, eclipsing even the 6 months of nonsense that was spurred on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the price can only increase. There is not much competition for Hormuz. If it is exorbitant now, it can only be more expensive later on. The demand for oil is not going to go down drastically for quite a few years. If there was another route, the oil would have found the way.
In time pipelines can be made, no? 2 million per ship already gives a lot of room for exorbitant infrastructure projects to break even in the medium term
Pipelines take years, even decades, at least here in Canada. You'd be surprised at how many billions of dollars and person-years of labour you need to get the thing turned on.
Five years at 2mil per ship will make Iran rich.
Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
pipelines, railway, etc. had the US had any real plan to empower the Gulf states against Iran there would already be backup routes
Pipelines are incredibly vulnerable to being taken offline by an inexpensive long-range strike. You can't just put them in the middle of a war zone, especially when we (the US) have targeted that same type of infrastructure first.
sure, as the oil wells and the pumping stations and everything not underground, but right now there's not even an option to try. (also loss of a pipe section compared to the loss of a tanker is much better economically, easy to replace, not to mention that there's no loss of life, so ultimately it can bear more risk even if there's an active conflict.)
Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
TBF, Iran is saying an exorbitant price right now, but in reality they will need to balance their price with demand to bring in the maximum possible revenue. The toll may work out in the long run.
The problem is the fee has nothing material to do with the straight itself. There are no maintenance costs for the open sea. Coordination is also not a big concern, you can tell because previously ships were able to pass without incident and coordinate among themselves. Actually, this is extortion. Meaning that it is done under threat of violence. Worse yet, the US military may end up enforcing this, and collecting o…
> There are no maintenance costs for the open sea.
There are massive maintenance costs for the open sea with how we utilize it. Maritime security and policing, navigational infrastructure, weather reporting, radio repeaters, international bureaucracy, etc.
Global maritime trade is extremely costly. It's simply hidden behind opaque public spending on things you don't think about. In all likelihood it's a sunk cost that would ballpark around a few hundred billion dollars annually, invisible money spent just to keep things running at the scale and reliability that they do.
Now the maritime traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz may only partially overlap with this spending, but people greatly overestimate just how "cheap" maritime activity actually is.
Re: Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire
#80[flagged]
Why would Iran give the US fees?