Iran makes first import order using cryptocurrency – report

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/iran-makes-first-import-order-using-cryptocurrency-tasnim-2022-08-09/

by pseudolus • 4 years ago

42 89 4 years ago

The agency didn't specify which cryptocurrency was used in the transaction.

Interesting

So this is a non-story so far (even with the backstory of Iran doing bitcoin mining - there are pros and cons of using it, though of course it is the most likely answer)

To pay with crypto you first need to acquire it (multiple ways to do it - including not so legal ones, though I'm not saying which way might have been)

doctorzook• 4 years ago

Last year, a study found that 4.5% of all bitcoin mining was taking place in Iran...

So there is that.

But the story ultimately looks entirely based on a tweet [1] from an official that Google translates as:

This week, the first official import order registration with #currency_currency worth 10 million dollars was successfully completed. By the end of September, the use of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts will be widespread in foreign trade with target countries.

So I agree that the story is pretty thin.

[1] https://twitter.com/peymanpak_ir/status/1556927239907835904

mahdi7d1• 4 years ago

Here mining's legality is still unclear. A lot of individuals mine bitcoin but illegally not because mining per say is illegal but because for example they mine in their farms using the cheap electricity that is being given to them for the purpose of producing crops and when government finds them I assume also takes the bitcoin they have mined.

LatteLazy4• 4 years ago

At this point, Sanctions (and really all of US-Iran policy) have failed completely so I see this as a net win for everyone...

devoutsalsa• 4 years ago

I just want KYC rules to go away. The user experience is quite horrible.

frozencell• 4 years ago

Just use Monero or Bitsk?

Synaesthesia• 4 years ago

Why doesn't the US and other governments ban Bitcoin?

lapser• 4 years ago

Yes. The US, the country that thinks of themselves as the beacon of hope and freedom, should ban Bitcoin.

FWIW, I wouldn't put it past the US govt to ban cryptocurrencies. It just would be extremely hypocritical. Something the US is pretty familiar with.

game-of-throws2• 4 years ago

So far the only places to fully ban cryptocurrency (afaik) have been authoritarian countries like Russia[1] and China[2]. The US banning an emerging tech would not be a good look.

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/07/15/vladimir-putin-ba...

[2] https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/09/24/china-s-makes-all-c...

LatteLazy4• 4 years ago

Banning crypto (or drugs or gambling or alcohol or whatever) is one thing. Actually enforcing that ban is another.

vangelis4• 4 years ago

You don't have to ban crypto. You could just ban exchanges. You can always exchange Bitcoin for cash and back, but that's a lot harder.

rufusroflpunch2• 4 years ago

It's just game theory. If banning it won't kill it (and it won't in this case), then you need to embrace it or lose out. The best they can hope for is to control the on-ramps and off-ramps.

spywaregorilla3• 4 years ago

Banning the on and off ramps is effectively going to kill it.

jonathan-adly• 4 years ago

Because government officials are supposed to be working for the people? Does your barber want to ban Bitcoin? The school-teacher? The doctor?

Nope. They either don't care or actually like it.

Also, "banning" things in America is close to impossible due to the populace intense distrust of the government. You can't even ban AR-15s, imagine thinking its possible to ban a piece of software running on a raspberry-pi.

ziddoap• 4 years ago

Also, "banning" things in America is close to impossible due to the populace intense distrust of the government. You can't even ban AR-15s, imagine thinking its possible to ban a piece of software running on a raspberry-pi.

Things are banned all the time in the US, including pieces of software. See Tornado Cash for an extremely recent example.

vangelis4• 4 years ago

Yeah, like abortion or drugs.

rr8082• 4 years ago

Possibly because it wasn't done with Bitcoin? Bitcoin is pretty bad for shady dealings because its open and everyone can see your transactions.

bushbaba2• 4 years ago

Only if you know who owns the wallets and both parties reuse their wallets.

You can then use a lawful nft sale on opensea to your “dirty” wallet to make the money look legitimate. With your defense being you merely sold the nft. You don’t know who the buyer is.

alfiedotwtf• 4 years ago

Transactions from your Bitcoin wallet can be worked out with a pen and paper, and then passed onto others by hand, entered into their Bitcoin node by typing in what's written down. By advocating banning Bitcoin, you just banned Free Speech.

he_is_legend• 4 years ago

I raise you DeCSS - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS

nradov6• 4 years ago

US federal courts haven't interpreted it that way, and the precedent you cited isn't applicable. Financial transactions with sanctioned entities aren't entitled to First Amendment protections. The technical means are entirely irrelevant, regardless of whether the transaction is performed with paper or on a computer.

sph7• 4 years ago

Good luck with banning an open technology.

game-of-throws2• 4 years ago

Iran uses USD as well. We can't ban everything that a country we don't like uses. There would be nothing left.

rvz• 4 years ago

The same reason why they haven't banned Tor. We both know they can't and they know they cannot. But they will focus and chase after the privacy coins instead.

So perhaps it is time to accept and admit that some cryptocurrencies are here to stay and reject the delusion that is repeated here that all of them are going to be totally banned 100% entirely.

paulproteus2• 4 years ago

For miners operating in the US, I’d like to see sanctions violations cases if they mine blocks that include transactions for Iranian (and other sanctioned) entities. This seems straightforward to me. Frankly I’m quite annoyed that my democratically elected representatives’ sanctions regime is being undermined by Americans interested in a quick buck from wasting electricity with their PC.

medo-bear• 4 years ago

lol the crypto currency used was not specified so my question is what miners would you target mr smartie pants

xtian8• 4 years ago

I’m quite annoyed at the sanctions regime conducted in my name with no democratic mandate or oversight whatsoever.

midasuni2• 4 years ago

You know the US is a democracy right? You might not like the results but you do have a voice.

kkkkvcxss• 4 years ago

Lmao this is like saying the US should charge the Fed for printing dollar bills with serial numbers later found to be used abroad for prohibited purposes

bushbaba2• 4 years ago

Worse many crypto investors have profited off of Iran and North Korea money laundering. A portion of which is being used to fund terrorism.

hervature• 4 years ago

Many terrorist groups from the Middle East use captured oil wells to fund their ventures. This gets mixed with other oil from the region via places like Turkey (a NATO ally). ISIS is reported to have made $500M in 2015 [1]. Anyway, the vast majority of the world buys this oil. This is why I say that Canada + USA which produce basically as much oil as Saudi + Russia should pull a DeBeers and sell "blood free" oil but obviously with a fun name like Freedom Oil.

[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/10/isiss-new-plans-to-get-...

spicyramen_• 4 years ago

Laughable, you need to read about blockchain

CoffeeCollector• 4 years ago

lol what an awful take

rglullis6• 4 years ago

How do you feel about North American urban planning? Suburban sprawl, miles and miles of asphalt to build roads, concrete and wasted space for parking lots, large and inefficient single-family homes... these are far more wasteful than someone running a computer at home. Worse still, these things are subsidized by all taxpayers, unlike a miner's electric bill.

midasuni2• 4 years ago

None of that directly benefits Iran

Helikentio3• 4 years ago

Strawman argument.

No one is stating that this might not be an issue.

People are totally able to complain about multiple things.

But let me tell you: it's much easier to bash crypto as it's new and fresh and very scammy and bad. It's a good thing that we stand up and say no to it for now to stop the already giant waste it creates.

We don't need an Additional co2 creater with zero benefit.

ipaddr• 4 years ago

Are the miners selling blocks directly to the Iranians? If not you would have to go to the entity who sold them coins probably an Asia market.

Otherwise if a copy of a music album makes it's way to a street vendor in Iran is Pink in trouble?

The your democratically elected official can only control waste of electricity in the region they live.

scottiebarnes• 4 years ago

Fascinating to me, because you likely know that any such declarations are wastes of time and will be unproductive. But you want this because of what it signals...

sph7• 4 years ago

This seems straightforward to me.

Your comment is so unrealistic and glosses over so many details I wonder if you're the type of politician that gets elected by saying you'll ban the Internet or force porn sites to require identification, and then have to face reality that it's a little more complicated than that.

I wouldn't even know where to start explaining that what you're asking for is a very hard problem even for a very closed political and economical system like China.

paulproteus2• 4 years ago

As I understand it, Bitcoin mining involves selecting which unconfirmed transactions (mem pool transactions) to include in the block. A common algorithm for selecting them is ones with higher fees. Another aspect could be ignoring ones from sanctioned wallet IDs. If treasury.gov had a monthly-updating CSV file of wallet IDs that are sanctioned, then the person setting up the mining software could have a cron job to refresh treasury.gov's list periodically. Would that work?

I think you're saying this would be a big hassle, maybe for miners. Can you explain that more?

hestefisk3• 4 years ago

Question is: why are these sanctions here in the first place? The US uses its control of the Dollar-based system to wield its power as it sees fit. It’s apparently ok for the US to have as many nukes as it sees fit, but not ok for others to have the same.

xtian8• 4 years ago

I 100% agree. The US recently added additional sanctions on China for chip making technology simply because China has improved their domestic chip manufacturing capabilities. There is no possible justification for the US getting to decide what products other countries are allowed to research and manufacture.

bsedlm2• 4 years ago

yes there is, it's the oldest justification in the book. for some reason it's not well seen but it's there and has been for a long time.

it's justification of might and power. summed up in "might makes right".

there's also something of this in the reasoning behind the phrase "history is written by the winners".

this is only an instance of power being wielded by the powerful.

boredumb• 4 years ago

The chinese have stolen enough IP to make this and other ventures of theirs possible, they absolutely get to feel at the very least some repercussion for it and should be treated as a thief in your home.

cjpearson2• 4 years ago

why are these sanctions here in the first place?

Initially they were a response to the Iran Hostage Crisis. Since the Clinton administration, the reasons have been Iran's nuclear program and support for groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

It’s apparently ok for the US to have as many nukes as it sees fit, but not ok for others to have the same.

This isn't just a US goal. 190 countries have agreed to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

PoignardAzur• 4 years ago

The Trump administration left the JCPOA unilaterally. So the sanctions are very much a US imposition on the rest of the world by now.

hestefisk3• 4 years ago

Prime example of US rhetoric though. The US is allowed nukes because they see themselves as the “benevolent dictator” of the world and only real superpower. Therefore “we” can hold nukes and tell everyone else what to do. On Hamas, it’s a great example of why the US system of designating who is a “terrorist” or not simply doesn’t work. In Palestine, Hamas are central to the liberation of Palestine from Israeli acts of aggression and terror against the Palestinians. Some would call them rebels or legitimate, organised political groups (as with PLO). Hamas have done a lot of wrong things and I’m not defending them. My point is merely to prove that just because it’s on a US list, doesn’t mean it is right.

winReInstall• 4 years ago

Cause alot of regional ex-empires want to be empire again instead of the empire. Some of those empires, align with the us interests, others muddle through (turkey), others align with opposing ex-empires (syria) and some try to win it stand-alone (Iran).

The ferrocity of american hatred also seems to increase, the more cultural similarity there is. Russia with its redneck culture and iranians with there crazy almost protestant messianic streak, are to much of a mirror to not bark and bite at.

Crypto is to find out about the ten dolar wench as the ultimate key..

nradov6• 4 years ago

Iran is being sanctioned for multiple reasons. The primary one is because they ratified the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), but then (allegedly) violated the terms. That treaty comes with a mix of benefits and responsibilities, and it specifically calls out the permanent Security Council members (including the US) as being allowed to have nukes. If Iran wanted to have nukes then they should have never ratified the treaty in the first place.

https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/

Iran is also being sanctioned as a state sponsor of terrorism.

https://www.state.gov/state-sponsors-of-terrorism/

hestefisk3• 4 years ago

Case in point, though: US is allowed nukes because they are “special”, the rest cannot. On “state sponsor of terrorism”, perhaps it’s time for the US to realise it’s a case of the pot calling the kettle back: 70+ years of clandestine operations supporting iron-fisted right-wing regimes in Indonesia (Suharto), Chile (Pinochet), Cuba (Bay of Pigs invasion / project Mongoose), Nicaragua (Contras), Iraq (Hussein prior to the US flipping on him in the invasion of Iraq), DRC (assassination of Lumumba) etc. My point here is not to be a dick, but simply to show that the US itself has sponsored hordes of so-called “state terrorists” and they get to pick and choose who is a terrorist or not based on some list in the State Department. That is not right.

can16358p• 4 years ago

While I don't have any sympathy about Islamic State at all, I love seeing crypto being taken seriously, especially to bypass US sanctions.

No authorithy, be it US or any other country, should have such a power.

It's good to see this patriotic ideology finally coming to an end.

toomuchtodo• 4 years ago

Without this power, the alternative is munitions. Is that the preference? Isn’t the non violence force projection more desirable when considering loss of life?

If your problem is with a superpower having superior force projection on the world stage, crypto doesn’t solve for that. The drone strikes and assassinations would still happen.

cjpearson2• 4 years ago

The Islamic State is ISIS. Iran calls itself an Islamic Republic.

OneLeggedCat• 4 years ago

"Under the 2015 agreement, Iran curbed its nuclear program in return for relief from U.S., EU and U.N. sanctions. But former U.S. President Donald Trump reneged on the nuclear deal in 2018 and restored harsh U.S. sanctions, prompting Tehran to start violating the agreement's nuclear limits about a year later"

The unstable math of the way that the U.S. democracy works means that we are going to have increasingly unstable (and therefore untrustworthy) policy responses to many world events in the next decades. Iran, and every other country on earth, now knows not to trust us, and its future actions will have that baked in. We've lost the moral high ground, and that will hurt us more than help us.

Iran makes first import order using cryptocurrency – report

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