Thread

1. guidoiaquinti · 1790685221 · focus · HN ↗

   Several International Criminal Court (ICC) judges have been unable to access their bank accounts or receive routine salary payments and financial transfers due to financial blockages triggered by United States sanctions. In the country where they live

   1. mhh__ · 1790688233 · focus · HN ↗

      Frankly I think this is a good bit of hormesis for European countries. It's critical that we have domestic payment infrastructure.

      1. busssard · 1790691265 · focus · HN ↗

         what would be an alternative currently? i know of services like twint but this is a local swiss solution. any more EU wide established solutions??

         1. alexgieg · 1790693556 · focus · HN ↗

            Cryptocurrencies in general are a good alternative. They're strictly unsanctionable and, depending on the currency selected, also untraceable, so secondary sanctions would be extremely difficult to apply with any kind of granularity. National-scale sanctions, evidently, would still be quite feasible.

            Alas, that kind of anonymity runs counter to the very soul of the European bureaucratic ethos. They absolutely want to know in detail where every single cent goes, plus the power to block transactions at will, so they're looking into some magic solution that allows them full purview and full control while perfectly denying the US and its spy apparatus the possibility to also see into it, an impossible combination of requirements.

            And I say all that as a fan of the EU. It's one of their many blind spots they need to overcome if they ever want to become a technological superpower.

            1. someonebaggy · 1790696017 · focus · HN ↗

               7 transactions per second

               1. alexgieg · 1790710032 · focus · HN ↗

                  Some new cryptocurrencies designed for interbank communication can do 20k transactions per second now, and can scale above that. It's just a matter of choosing the appropriate stack for the task.

                  1. someonebaggy · 1790714616 · focus · HN ↗

                     Can they do it within ten seconds and completely decentralised, as well? Which ones?

                     1. alexgieg · 1790757527 · focus · HN ↗

                        I think the currently fastest is Hedera (HBAR), at 2 minutes per transaction or so, and that it's also the most decentralized, without that mechanism other crypto currencies have that the more you own, the stronger your power over the network. There's still some power at the nodes level though, in that if they all coordinate they can shutdown the network for whatever reason. I also read it's designed such that those metrics improve as the network grows.

                        But I'm not a specialist, I'm just interested in the technology and play with it a little, so take what I wrote with a grain of salt.

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