Iran Demands Bitcoin For Ships Passing Hormuz During Ceasefire - Slashdot
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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: Iran will demand that shipping companies pay tolls in cryptocurrency for laden oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz (source paywalled; alternative source), as it seeks to retain control over passage through the key waterway du...

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,” Hosseini added.

  • i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    3·
    14 hours ago

    Is Bitcoin really a good idea? bitcoin.com says you shouldn’t worry because it would cost “hundreds of millions to over a billion dollars” to run a 51% attack on the Bitcoin network for an hour. The US government spends this kind of money on wars, and likely has the means to reduce that cost by forcing offline or compromising a large portion of the trustworthy Bitcoin network. This alone wouldn’t allow money to be seized, but it could be used to destroy the crypto market, making that money effectively worthless. You wouldn’t normally need to worry about an attack of this scale, but the it’s not beneath this government and there are a few AI companies that could use a government bailout in exchange for temporarily converting all their GPUs to Bitcoin miners.

    Does World War III involve different countries attacking and defending crypto currencies?