this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
707 points (99.0% liked)

World News

38506 readers
2658 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The impact of the West's sanctions just seems to be getting worse and worse for Russia.

Now, 98% of Chinese banks — even small regional ones — are refusing to accept direct Chinese payment transfers from Russia, Alexey Razumovsky, the commercial director of the payments company Impaya Rus, told the pro-Kremlin media outlet Izvestia.

Such issues appear to have intensified over the past three weeks, as smaller Chinese financial companies were still processing Russian payments in May and June, Izvestia reported.

Last month, the Russian outlet Kommersant reported that about 80% of bank transfers made in the Chinese yuan were bouncing back with no explanation after being stalled for weeks while banks decided whether they could transact.

Razumovsky told Izvestia the payment challenges with Chinese banks could contribute to supply-chain difficulties and inflation in Russia.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Laser 9 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (4 children)

Because for those states and companies, crypto is a toy and not real money. Also not having a bank means your transactions are always final (nobody is putting up with multisig).

Crypto has been great for buying drugs via darknet and taking money from investors for partnerships that don't exist or make sense. Been using it myself actually. Also facilitates gambling, either via crypto casinos or directly against its price. Outside of that, traditional banking wins.

It's also questionable whether a state could acquire so much crypto quietly at this point. Most big holders are either very publicly about it, like Argentina, or confiscated it from illegitimate sources (like when Germany raided a darknet market operator).

[–] frezik@midwest.social 1 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

I suppose they could mine it all themselves. To handle all its international trade, a good sized nation state would need the electrical production of a smaller nation state just for that.

[–] Laser 3 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

The amount of crypto you can theoretically mine is independent of your hashrate and only dependent on the block reward plus transaction fees... and these are minuscule compared to what a state needs.

In practice, if an actor held even slightly more than 50% hashrate, trading with him would be a major risk. Which means that's about the upper limit of what you can actually mine.

[–] BobGnarley@lemm.ee 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

See this was what I was really wondering. Some cryptp like Dogecoin and Monero have unlimited amounts that can be mined and while certainly not practical in my mind I was 100% thinking why not just mine a fuck ton of Doge or something and have it agreed upon that that is the international trade money.

I do see how converting it into a fiat currency would be problematic though but in that case wouldn't gold or silver also he able to be utilized?

[–] Laser 2 points 3 weeks ago

The goal of a banking system is to move money (possibly a lot) quickly, without physical exchange, for the maximum number of goods and services. States also want to control a currency for their fiscal policy, and they want to be able to go into debt.

Established crypto fails the maximum number, fiscal policy and debt criteria. As soon as you introduce mandatory physical exchange via previous metals, what remains?

And yes; Monero theoretically has an infinite amount of coins. However, it has reached tail emission since about two years, meaning the block reward is 0.6XMR every two minutes, which currently equates to about $65.000 per day. However, mining requires CPUs, which would need to be acquired first.

All in all, the current numbers don't make it a feasible solution.