If SWIFT actually pulls the plug, I’d consider the fuse to be lit. Also, if SWIFT does it before 20 March, this is probably the real reason: Last week, the Tehran Times noted that the Iranian oil bourse will start trading oil in currencies other than the dollar from March 20. This long-planned move is part of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vision of "economic war" with the west. “The dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme is nothing more than a convenient excuse for the US to use threats to protect the ‘reserve currency’ status of the dollar,” the newspaper, which calls itself the voice of the Islamic Revolution, said. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SWIFT is going to pull the plug on Iran on 17 March, three days before the opening of the oil bourse. aha  All SWIFT does is allows secure communication between two banks. I expect Iranian banks have already setup other ways to communicate with their correspondent banks. With the internet, banks don't really need this middleman interfering with their communication. A simple SSL tunnel over the internet is more secure and has the added benefit that the US doesn't get a feed of all the transactions. It's also much much cheaper. Sure, they can use Paypal. Seriously now, no bank is able to transfer money if they don't go through SWIFT. [/qupte] Not true. Anybody can instruct their bank to pay an Iranian bank by paying via the Iranian bank's account at some other bank. Similar to how you deposit money into your mtgox account by paying mtgox at mtgox's bank account, even though mtgox accounts are not on the SWIFT system. Iranian banks (as all banks do) maintain bank accounts with other banks. They use them to process payments on behalf of their customers. These accounts at other banks are not being cut off even from SWIFT (and even if they were the same method can be used to hop through multiple banks instead of just one). If they need to transfer additional information about what payments are for or where they should go next, they can just as easily use the phone, fax or custom new software running over the Internet. There are no bank information systems that work without SWIFT clearance when the transfers are international. No bank manager would take the offer of his IT staff to do transfers through "SSH tunnels" or any other tunnels for that matter.
I have seen the stunnel program (SSL, not SSH) in use at several banks to facilitate inter bank as well as bank <-> client financial communications. I've also seen socat in use as well. It's actually not a bad way to do things.. more secure than some of the traditional ways. I don't really see any problem with two banks exchanging SWIFT formated messages directly between themselves over a tunnel - it might not even require too much modification of the end systems.
It's a little known but most powerful monopoly, and it's no wonder that central banks would want it to be there in the first place. There is no other structure or organization who can take the responsibility to ensure that 100M$ credit/debit will get from A to B to pay for filling up Panamax carriers. Therefore no bank would trust any alternative. Full circle.
Banks mostly operate on bilateral contracts. Using swift is really just a convenience and not being able to use it doesn't in any way stop two banks from contracting with each other or providing each other with correspondent services. Bitcoins might be a solution, but not until you can get at least 2 banks agreeing to use them for transactions between them.
Right.. even that is possible.. but more likely is that they'll use turkish lira, chinese yuan, russian rubles, indian rupees and venezuelan bolivars or even US dollars held in a friendly country's banking system. It might be a better idea to lobby the Iranian government, instead of the Iranian people, as was suggested earlier in the thread. However, this will probably be much more difficult to do, as Bitcoin will meet direct competition from gold. And Bitcoin will lose, at least for the foreseeable future.
I guess all that's really needed is for someone to setup a bitcoin exchange in Iran. I don't know if it would be illegal, but frankly I don't know if any of the bitcoin exchanges are legal anyway and that didn't stop anyone  |
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http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/16/here-today-china-tomorrow-paypal-optimistic-it-will-get-a-domestic-payment-license/The company says it is “cautiously optimistic” that it will become the first non-Chinese company to get a license to process domestic electronic payments — both online and via mobile devices. This would be in addition to a business it already has in the country to process international payments. I'm not sure how this will work. Currently, Chinas largest paypal-like company Alipay offers a no chargeback merchant account Why would merchants want to use a chargebackable (is that even a word?) company that charges crazy %%%%%% Most likely so that they can accept payments from Americans and Europeans... |
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If SWIFT actually pulls the plug, I’d consider the fuse to be lit. Also, if SWIFT does it before 20 March, this is probably the real reason: Last week, the Tehran Times noted that the Iranian oil bourse will start trading oil in currencies other than the dollar from March 20. This long-planned move is part of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vision of "economic war" with the west. “The dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme is nothing more than a convenient excuse for the US to use threats to protect the ‘reserve currency’ status of the dollar,” the newspaper, which calls itself the voice of the Islamic Revolution, said. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SWIFT is going to pull the plug on Iran on 17 March, three days before the opening of the oil bourse. aha All SWIFT does is allows secure communication between two banks. I expect Iranian banks have already setup other ways to communicate with their correspondent banks. With the internet, banks don't really need this middleman inferfering with their communication. A simple SSL tunnel over the internet is more secure and has the added benefit that the US doesn't get a feed of all the transactions. It's also much much cheaper. |
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[snip] Actually, I doubt you're getting many sales at all; current Intersango price is 3.32 per coin. Your markup is therefore £3 per coin. I'm sure some people would be willing to pay a certain premium for the convenience of an SMS service, but a near 100% markup is excessive I think. My suggestions then (not that I've got any say in anything you do): - Lower your markup from 100%
This is meant in the spirit of helpfulness. I would like to see bitcoin businesses succeed. The phone companies charge very high transaction fees for SMS payments.. usually 40% to 50%.. there's no way to make it cheaper using this technology - unless the telcos slash their prices. If you say so; I don't know anything about the business. (but http://www.textvertising.co.uk/sms-services/sms-competitions/text-raffles.htm is interesting: £20 a month) snipped There isn't much info and I don't know for sure but I'd guess that they are charging £20/month *AND* a 40-50% per transaction fee. |
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[snip] Actually, I doubt you're getting many sales at all; current Intersango price is 3.32 per coin. Your markup is therefore £3 per coin. I'm sure some people would be willing to pay a certain premium for the convenience of an SMS service, but a near 100% markup is excessive I think. My suggestions then (not that I've got any say in anything you do): - Lower your markup from 100%
This is meant in the spirit of helpfulness. I would like to see bitcoin businesses succeed. The phone companies charge very high transaction fees for SMS payments.. usually 40% to 50%.. there's no way to make it cheaper using this technology - unless the telcos slash their prices. |
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So if someone has money and want to pay someone who has Dwolla ( me) for Bitcoins they can still chargeback dwolla right ?
It seems like it is possible in some circumstances.. such as if they claim their dwolla and/or bank account was hacked. I think it's quite alot harder to get a dwolla transaction reversed than a paypal one though. |
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There are features already implemented which will make the recent heist a nightmare of the past. The problem is they can't be deployed before the majority of hashing power agrees. I am not vouching for a particular one - just trying to convince you that you should start mining at a pool supporting any of the solutions. Unfortunately Deepbit is currently supporting NONE of them. http://blockchain.info/p2shThis isn't really true. Multisig will not stop bitcoins from being stolen. If it's an online wallet that supports automated withdrawl then hackers can just do whatever the application normally does to process withdrawls. Maybe the webapp makes an rpc call to some other server to process the second signature.. fine, you just do that. easy. If you can make automated/instant withdrawls then so can a hacker - there's no way around this fundamental issue. |
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I don't think Birch really understands bitcoin and thinks it's the same (but less efficient) than some centralized system like mpesa. At one point he claims that bitcoin is a payment system and he could use it to manage transactions in pounds or dollars (rather than in bitcoins). The only way that could happen is if the government of the UK or the US moved all pounds or dollars into a block chain as all transactions have to happen there. Given how unlikely that is, I don't think he really knows what he's saying. The bitcoin blockchain system seems complicated and unwieldy but really it's just amazing that someone was able to come up with a system that works without a central authority - at all. I think it's unlikely we'll see any major improvements on the public ledger inside a blockchain idea anytime soon, so predictions of some next big thing taking over from bitcoin seem unlikely to me at the moment. I've had my cards declined enough times for spurious 'for my safety' security checks to be tired of the payment processor second guessing my payments. There is a clear market for cash like transactions on the internet that are private and free from interference (however well intentioned) by any 3rd party. I'm sure there will still be a large market for centralized digital currency wallets and NFC and all that stuff - but none of that is competing in the same space as bitcoin.. they're just new debit card systems. |
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though the jurisdiction wasn't mentioned, nearly everywhere it is illegal to manage the funds of others for trading unless registered to do so (e.g., as a brokerage or as a qualified custodian)
agreed, however it is legal to directly sell securities that you own to someone else. You could accept BTC in such a transaction (or any other form of payment you feel like). The question is only complicated because if you have shares in a brokerage account, you don't really have them in your posession to sell so you would need to convince your broker to transfer them to your client.. that might be problematic, but you could ask your broker to send you the share certificates and then transfer them to your client yourself. |
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I'm just wondering if this would be illegal: The buyer would send the seller BTC, and the seller would buy the stocks in HIS brokerage account. The seller then transfers the stocks to the buyers brokerage. Would that be illegal? I'm not planning on doing it, but just me being curious.  I'm pretty sure it would be legal, as long as everyone was properly identified and recorded. If you withdraw shares in certificate form your brokerage you can call up the company's registrar and reassign them to anyone you want, so I don't see why the brokerages would get in the way - but I suppose they might refuse to transfer them to someone else at another brokerage.. that wouldn't be a legal issue though just the brokerage being paranoid and unhelpful. |
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It would mean that we might be running out of the cheap pumpable oil that has fueled the economic development of the 20th Century. Even if so -- it does not matter There is cheap and more clean energy source -- Natural gas. Plenty available worldwide. And guess what ? Its price nosediving right now Yes, but that is probably the short term effect of an over investment in shale gas technology.. someone is going to lose alot of money on shale gas. Many of the shale gas fields that were brough online only a few years ago are already starting to deplete. This was not expected. To keep up production there will need to be a massive continuous drilling program that certainly wouldn't be justified by current gas prices. Even as prices go up harvesting relatively small pockets of gas all over the place would require enormous invesment. It may still be one of our better options, but it's nowhere near as good as oil was, unfortunately. People tend to underestimate the sheer scale of what the oil industry has delivered us - it may not be possible to replace. I'm quite interested in LENR/cold fusion as there have been some promising experiments recently but probably nothing that will be ready for use anytime soon. In the short term the oil crisis will be solved by the economy imploding and less people driving around or flying in planes. |
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This is pretty interesting, but actually I think it will end up hurting SWIFT more than Iran. All swift actually does is allow messages to be securely exchanged between banks. They don't need to use it and if they suddenly can't use it - some workaround will be devised which, once in use might turn into a long term swift competitor that can be used by other countries as well. It will still be possible for Iranian banks to access their correspondent accounts at banks they do business with - it just means they won't be able to use SWIFT to communicate with those banks anymore. Initially they'll proably have to resort to fax and telephone or even email but soon some other platform will be developped - maybe just some form of online banking that works over the internet the same way our personal accounts do. Or maybe a standardized web services API. All they need to do is be able to see when a payment comes into the foreign bank so they can credit their local customer, or pay someone that their local customer wants to pay. SWIFT isn't really that great anyway and if an alternative is developped it will probably end up being much cheaper. One thing I read is that Iran's ATM network is linked to the ATM network in Bahrain and maybe some other gulf countries so presumably people living there can easily funnel money into /out of Iranian banks using the ATM network. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetab_Banking_SystemTo understand how pointless this is - someone in Iran can probably just setup an account (either create a Ltd company or maybe even just a personal account) at a bank in Bahrain or Dubai and withdraw cash at ATMs inside Iran over the Shatab system. |
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After buying them on MtGox, I would transfer them to an address on another exchange. Then, via TOR, after a few days, transfer them to a blockchain.info wallet, then again via tor another few days later to paper wallet addresses for long term storage.
I am trying to make it impossible to prove that I still have the btc originally purchased on mtgox. This way, someone would have to crack mtgox, the second exchange and the blockchain.info wallet to prove I still have them, right? Do you guys see any flaws with the plan?
many thanks!
seems reasonable to me.. maybe trade into litecoins, solidcoins, namecoins etc and then out via a different exchange. For example buy soildcoins on btc-e and then sell them on solidcoin24.com. You also could do the same thing using liberty reserve or maybe bitinstant on the USD side of the trade.. sell the coins for LR or bitinstant and then move the LR or bitinstant to another exchange and buy bitcoins there. There's even another way you could do it.. List something forsale on bitmit.net - then when someone buys it, drop ship it from amazon using one of the bitcoin -> amazon gift voucher services. You get new bitcoins from the buyer. |
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I have been following this thread and the thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63465.0 with a lot of interest The issue here as was the case with Paypal is that services that accept funding via a credit card as a purchase cannot then allow those funds to be used to purchase another form of money. This is to avoid what is in reality a cash advance transaction to be treated as a purchase. One cannot go to say a Canadian Merchant with a Canadian Credit Card and for example purchase CAD or EUR. The consumer has to instead go to a bank, and get a cash advacne on the Credit Card and then purchase the USD or EUR. These rules have been in place for a very long time, long before Bitcoin or even the Internet existed, and for a very good reason. I've actually wondered about this - would it be possible to somehow bill bitcoin transactions as a cash advance? Perhaps if we had actual bitcoin ATMs that could do a card present pin transaction? Some ATMs actually have menu items that allow you to top up your mobile phone for instance.. perhaps a menu item could be added to some machines to buy bitcoins at an ATM and treat that as a cash advance transaction? |
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We will never have our funds locked or frozen. We do not deal with traditional banking instruments. We are the future. We will never ask for your personal documents. We will never put a limit on how much you can withdrawal daily or monthly. We will never change. Visit, www.coinexchanger.comNOTE to Jered Kenna from tradehill. I warned you about Paxum... I told you!! So how does someone pay coinexchanger then? I looked at the site but it doesn't say anywhere and I can't be bothered to create an account... |
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seems like this could be sortof implemented by the tor exit nodes putting up a donation address on the webserver tehy run on the exit IP. Then people who use the service could donate to them.
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Is it possible to do something like transfer money out of a PayPal account to Dwolla or Liberty Reserve and then use those for MtGox purchases? Or are there any exchange services that do something like this?
If you google for paypal liberty reserve exchange several sites come up - so looks like it's quite possible and even easy. I expect the fees you'll incur from using one of these services may be quite extortionate however. |
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Perkstreet asks me SSN, so it's a no go. I'll look into Green Dot, although for that I better get the prepaid visa cards from bitcoincashout if/when they have stock.
Your best bet is probably to get an offshore USD account - they're used to dealing with foreign mailing addresses. I imagine there may be some that still have access to the US ACH system. |
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Seems like a pointless gesture that will only annoy people with the same or less ability to do anything about it.
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