> People in Iran had gained access to more than 1,500 accounts on the Binance platform over the previous year. About $1.7 billion had flowed from two Binance accounts to Iranian entities with links to terrorist groups, a possible violation of global sanctions. And one of those accounts belonged to a Binance vendor.
> After uncovering the transactions, the investigators reported them to top executives, according to company records and other documents reviewed by The New York Times.
> Within weeks, Binance fired or suspended at least four employees involved in the investigation, according to the documents and three people with knowledge of the situation. The company cited issues such as “violations of company protocol” related to the handling of client data.
[..]
> But internal warnings about the Iranian transactions surfaced last year, in the months before President Trump granted a pardon to Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, who had spent four months in federal prison in 2024 for his role in the firm’s crimes. The Trump family’s crypto start-up, World Liberty Financial, has forged close business ties with Binance, and Mr. Zhao was a guest this month at a conference at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla.
A "few seconds" to pay in bitcoin? So the captain is supposed to be watching for a response via email with his finger hovering over the pay button? Is the recipient address static? Surely they would use unique payment addresses if they have any hope of obfuscating payments.
This all sounds more like a TV show script than an actual thought-out plan to me.
The payments are going to a government. They're not using bitcoin to hide the payments, they're using it because receiving USD or Euros or whatever would mean that a hostile government could seize the funds from the bank.
The tracking is unique though. I don't know who had the $20 in my wallet before me or what series of payments it was a part of, but crypto has the curious property that over time, essentially all crypto money will have at some point passed through wallets associated with controversial entities or transactions.
Transaction fees are based on the complexity of the inputs/outputs, not the value transacted. You are literally paying for the minimum amount of data necessary to prove you own the funded sending-address, paying to write those hashes and amounts into the blockchain. The institution handling this offchaing lightning branch can implement fees in whatever structure you agree to transact, including percentage based.
Lightning is just an off-chain out-branch, which will eventually be re-integrated onto the main blockchain (based on its original funding/terms). The benefit of this is that single entities can branch off the main blockchain, which is limited in its total blocksize/capacity.
The only limits are those by the handling lightning institution. This differs from bitcoin's main public blockchain, which rewards/creates approximately six blocks /hour, each with a limit of just a couple megabytes.
Lightning is a protocol and there can theoretically be many disjoint networks. The biggest network is usually what's considered to be 'the' lightning network. Double spending, which would require 'settling' a superseded lightning transaction, is prevented by a penalty mechanism that makes it so the malicious party loses all the funds in their 'channel' when caught (which will be, at smallest, the amount the original payment was made for).
I'm still thrown. I don't see how an after the fact penalty can work.
Let's say I have 1 BTC. I buy something for 1 BTC on lightning network A. Simultaneously (within nanoseconds) I buy something for 1 BTC on lightning network B. I never plan to use BTC again (or if I do, I will use a different wallet, etc.) Do I just get two purchases? Is there a meta-network clearing house, and if so, why are there many disjoint networks.
Or do I need to have moved my BTC into the lightning network A or B before I spend it?
On the main chain, bitcoin transactions can have "scripts" that describes who and under what condition this money can be spent.
You have to lock your bitcoin on the main chain in a script that shares the bitcoin between you, and another lightning network user (typically a hub)
The trick is that a lightning transaction happen by signing transactions to the other party that changes the way the bitcoins are split, without broadcasting it to the main chain. You only broadcast to the main chain when you want to unlock the bitcoin.
Broadcasting an earlier transaction will result of you losing the found because subsequent transaction contains secrets that allow the other party to take them.
Once you've allocated BTC, you cannot doublespend it elsewhere (well, you can try, but verification nodes will reject it so the blockchain will never accept).
> Transaction fees are based on the complexity of the inputs/outputs, not the value transacted
Not on the lightning network. Fees are used to incentivize or disincentivize routes across channels.
> The institution handling this offchaing lightning branch can implement fees in whatever structure you agree to transact, including percentage based.
No institution is needed. Even if one is used as an intermediary, when using lightning non-custodially, the economics of lightning are such that fees are determined by the nodes in the payer's desired route. If it's a custodial transfer from one user to another, no routes are needed.
No way they're boarding boats. They can get an accurate enough cargo weight within seconds visually (maybe minutes, depending on how computerized it is)
Why would you want to obfuscate payments if you can track how many ships entered the gulf using transponders? Regarding money laundering, you use Tornado Cash or Monero
It is interesting in several different ways, because I was speculating on how it is being done before current cease fire. Everything seemed to be point to Yuan ( or other non-USD currencies ), which then are more easily settled by vessel owners and likely buried under some non-descript names like fees to be , maybe, questioned later its all done.
edit: And it seems I was wrong despite it being my initial thought in terms of used rail.
Iran is already quite dependent on the PRoC as a trading partner; using RMB as their primary currency for these payments would further increase their 'counter-party risk'. That said, RMB exchange-rate manipulation may also be a significant factor in their decision.
Does this mean ceasefire is now broken? The 10 point plan was to be discussed later in the peace talks, but what was the exact conditions that predicated the ceasefire?
The ceasefire agreement was mediated by Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan. He announced yesterday that the US and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon. They agreed to base negotiations on Iran's 10-point proposal. [1] Trump released his own statement that the US was agreeing to the ceasefire, again using Iran's 10-point proposal as a basis. [2] Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would comply with the ceasefire. [3] Hours later, Israel carried out a brutal strike on dense commercial and residential areas in Southern Lebanon without warning, killing at least 254 people and injuring more than 1,000 others. [4] The IRGC announced that if Trump didn't rein in Israel, Iran would exit the ceasefire arrangement. [5] Trump then told a reporter that Lebanon was not in the deal, contradicting Sharif's statement. [6] In response, Iran's speaker of the parliament released a statement outlining how the US had violated three of Iran's 10 points and that he viewed a bilateral ceasefire as now being unreasonable. [7]
> Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would comply with the ceasefire. [3]
That's not really what the source says. There is no ceasefire agreement in force at all (only a basis for negotiations with Iran), let alone one that covers Hezbollah.
You're right that Netanyahu's statement contradicts Sharif's statement, which says that "the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies" agreed to the immediate ceasefire. It makes me wonder what was going on behind the scenes.
Definitively if they agreed to it as part of the ceasefire. What did each part actually agree to when they agreed to a ceasefire? There doesn't seem to be much concrete information about that part.
I think only the US is not bombing anyone for the time being. I think, and hope, they will slowly pull out of there and not fuck up the status quo any further.
As best I can tell, the Iranian regime and Sharif both said that they ceasefire included a cease to strikes on Lebanon, Netanyahu explicitly said that it did not, and the Trump admin, Lebanon, and Hezbollah have not yet commented either way.
Iran is ATM saying it closed the Strait again, implied that it will wait until Israel stand down at least.
Even if USA insist on Israel-Hezbollah (and so Lebanon) be kept apart from any deal to end their war in Iran, it would still mean a terrible strategic and diplomatic disaster between USA and Israel, because Israel Gov' will be left with two terrible scenarios:
1) Trump Admin' will concede to Iran they'd be leaving the region and leaving Israel to defend itself alone, because the Hormuz being open for business and the Gulf states being spared would be enough; or
2) USA will have to resume hostilities, meaning domestically Trump will have to explain the US Military is obliged to continue the war effort for as long as Israel want.
IMHO don't see how Israel-US can politically survive those two scenarios.
Lebanon has also said that the ceasefire doesn't apply to Hezbollah, since they insist that both them and Israel are at war with Hezbollah, not with each other. The only parties that say it does are Hezbollah and Pakistan.
Honestly, it’s a good counter to get both sides of the coin. At the moment you’ll find BBC, CNN, NYT et al on one end and Al Jazeera on the other. I also look at DW for a more balanced approach. Don’t consume from one camp!
Just be aware that DW is literally government propaganda. If you want news from a German perspective, it's great; however its purpose is explicitly to give the German governments POV.
Fair call on CNN and DW, but the NYT has always been at least somewhat aligned with Al Jazeera, and the BBC switches around with whatever the current government is.
> NYT has always been at least somewhat aligned with Al Jazeera
Hard disagree: the NYT adopts a weird passive voice that goes against its house style, along with headlines with no subject when it comes to events in Gaza[1]. Al Jazeera consistently names the doers of the verbs.
1. Once you're aware of it, it becomes impossible not to notice. It is the Wilhelm scream of news coverage.
This is such an important point, and I wish it were more widely spoken about. As a daily NYT reader, I noticed a profound shift in the early days of the current admin. I might be off on the timing, curious to know what other daily NYT readers have to say. It's an incredibly effective technique given the relative subtlety, and in my experience it seems to exhaust the mental resources of the critical reader.
You're very very off on the timing: the first year of the genocide (and the majority of the official casualties) was under the previous administration. The bias on Gaza was observed across the board from the start (and arguably for the last 70 years).
NYT is also frequently silent on certain news stories that paints U.S. in a bad light that I consider noteworthy enough. Whenever I encounter a story I want to know more about I check all the mainstream reporting; Reuters and CNN would have it most of the time (even if not in a neutral tone) but NYT often doesn’t cover it at all or bury it in a sentence or two in a related, milder story. Not gonna name specific instances but you can pay attention from now on and you’ll see a pattern after a while.
Al Jazeera is a private news organization mostly funded by the state of Qatar.
It is not "the other side of the coin". Qatar is very much on the US side, and opposite to Iran.
Their reporting is fine, and I typically find it more informative than the US news sources. But let's not pretend you are getting the Iranian side of the deal here.
Particularly, my favorite news sources for the war is, oddly enough, FT
Yeah, I'm really just looking for less Americanized coverage from the region. Al Jazeera is fine, I'm glad to hear any other recommendations for sources. (thanks for FT)
No? Sources? It's possible that Qatar's government has some editorial control over the Arabic content, but my understanding is that the English operations are separate.
Those don't really add to your argument. The Kashmir issue sounds like a mistake that Al Jazeera tried to address. The Factually analysis indicates that Al Jazeera is generally reliable for news, with caution advised for coverage of highly-political events and editorials, which I think is typical of any media organization.
> Also, I really wouldn't suggest using aljazeera.
Yeah, I agree - I have the same objections to ajazeera that I have to RT, CNN, Fox News, NYT, etc. - they are each overwhelming pressure from controlling corporations and states that they can't shine light where it needs to be shone.
But in this case, I was really only pasting them for links to the statements by Pakistan and Iran, which I do trust them to link / quote faithfully. It wasn't meant as an endorsement of their editorial or news-gathering quality.
I suspect more fighting in Lebanon means less oil through Hormuz. Iran kept its definition of "open" vague. Everyone is keeping the pressure up during negotiations.
Maybe I'm just cynical but I have to assume someone will test the extent Iran can hold them to a payment if it doesn't want to stop maintaining the terms of the ceasefire to back up the demand?
Is the US seriously going to side with Iran on a missing payment? Assuming not, is the value of the ceasefire more than $1m for Iran if a ship slyly doesn't pay or the few million if one starts a trend? As I said I might be cynical but I see layered games of chicken where some people are surprisingly risk tolerant..
Iran's terms are all ships transiting the strait have to coordinate with its military. One would assume they are monitoring ship movements, and know which ones are complying and which ones are not.
The US doesn't need to "side with Iran" on anything: ship captains, owners and insurers are free to gamble their ships and payloads against Iran's resolve and strike capabilities, my assumption is they like to predictability make money, and not losing customer's billion-dollar payloads is part of that.
Having your ship blown up won't guarantee the US will consider the ceasefire violated, history is littered with post-armistice engagements and deaths.
All very reasonable.. But plenty of odd stuff happened in maritime during covid and plenty of odd stuff related to ghost fleet.. My point is not that Exon is going to save a million my point is that it is an interesting way that I think the cease fire would come to an end if it became a stable one on other fronts. I.e. the US doesn't have to choose based on anything but what is expedient to it wanting an end to the cease fire, a boat may be from the right country with the wrong organizational finances for the mounting costs so far, and so on..
What's the incentive for a ship captain to risk this? Even if they're more confident than almost everyone else that it's a bluff and think there's a 95% chance Iran does nothing, a 5% chance of you and your crew being incinerated is a crazy risk to take.
Would you go to your normal job tomorrow if someone who has a history of carrying out threats has threatened to kill you for it?
You can't imagine someone who would go to that job simply because the owner hired a bouncer and they have a different faith in authority or really mean looking bouncers than you?
I can spend 10 minutes looking at demographics and tell you the world is not explainable if the measuring stick is my own risk tolerances.
too early to say. You always ask for more than you can possibly get in these things so that you have something to compromise on (it is stupid but that is how that game is played)
There was never going to be a ceasefire. It was just Taco Tuesday and yet another market manipulation day. Republicans and Democrats ruled by whoever has original Epstein files are just filling their boots.
”Hosseini said that each tanker must email authorities about its cargo, after which Iran will inform them of the toll to be paid in digital currencies.
“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.”
As bitcoin is quite traceable I don't see how this works if you're trying to avoid sanctions. For Iran it probably doesn't matter but for the vessel owners it probably does.
Not over lightning. Even on-chain, trustless coin swaps (or cross-chain swaps) can be made with different counterparties all over the world where transaction details are all held off-chain (pay in ethereum and receive on bitcoin for example).
Business idea - Iran Bitcoin fee intermediary. Realistically the CIA will handle this for US companies and maybe allies until they figure something out.
So apart from all the geopolitics of it this line is interesting
"few seconds to pay in bitcoin, ensuring they can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions,’ Hosseini added"
Maybe I'm ignorant of Bitcoin but isn't Bitcoin transactions recorded in a public cryptographically signed ledger? Isn't that literally the opposite of "can't be traced"?
Or, if you knew the bitcoin addresses, you could figure out exactly how much oil is being moved. I would think oil data analysts would love to have access to that data (if they don't already).
What is to stop the ships from lying ? I wonder if Iran will do spot check of some ships to prevent this. And will boarding ships cause Trump to have yet another breakdown ?
Even if ship displacement wasn't an observable thing, there's no real reason that empty oil ships enter the strait, and then again leave empty, after having obviously docked at an oil terminal, on any regular basis.
Public and observable information makes it trivial to make high-accuracy assessments about the veracity of the claim.
And $2m is sufficient budget to finance spot checks, especially given you'd have to apply them to an exceedingly small percentage of ships. A year salary of an average Iranian police guard is about 5k, for context.
Plus you can create a scenario where fraud being detected is prohibitively expensive, and may even result in the captain being imprisoned in Iran. I wouldn't expect a lot of lies.
Lying about their cargo? Can’t lie about the weight … Probably the savings from lying about the nature of the cargo is not worth the risk of exploding..
To add more context to what I believe the parent commenter was referring to, the vast majority of USD stablecoins are custodial, meaning the funds can be frozen arbitrarily at any time by the custodian (i.e. Circle).
This is why when cyberthreat actors steal millions in USD stablecoins by hacking a protocol or a large wallet, the very first thing they do is convert those stablecoins to something else.
Yeah pretty since the start of the conflict there was talk of companies could use Chinese yuan to get an pass through. It also makes more sense they would use the Chinese yuan the West can track or block those transactions.
Not only that the Chinese Yuan is probably more interesting given they can buy more things with it from China things like consumer tech/products, chemicals and rare earths for weapon systems etc.
China issued a stable coin about five years ago. It is used for all retail payments (I believe, small value, payments for govt employee salaries, etc). Somewhat bizarrely, it is significantly more privacy-protecting than payments in the West.
Quite funny to read comments from people asking what use is crypto. Can tell they have probably never left West Virgina.
Don't think it would be that useful for Iran though as they are already RMB earners, and RMB financial markets are still a bit questionable (there is depth, I don't think anyone knows why this depth exists or what it is actually for, just state-linked banks moving paper between themselves furiously).
I believe the only stablecoin that is "uncensorable" is the old MakerDAO DAI (pegged to USD with vaults overcollaterised with other tokens).
Not sure if there is a lot of liquidity left.
Its successor USDS has implemented all the mechanisms to censor some addresses but if I remember correctly this hasn't been activated yet.
All the other ones: USDC, USDT, EURC and the ruble one can be whipped out easily. So more risky for them than good old dollars.
Now I am still wondering, does the taproot asset protocol make it really uncensorable? because on Ethereum an address can be blacklisted by Tether and the USDT frozen (through the ERC20 contract I believe).
And I would be a bit surprise that Tether, which is more and more integrated and compliant with regulations, would start minting USDT on a system that doesn't have an asset freezing mechanism...
Edit: Piecing together from other comments, it sounds like these tolls are denominated in USD ($1 per barrel), but as an implementation detail, they're charging in BTC as the instrument of choice, not a stablecoin.
They phrase the tolls in USD "so the price is stable", and since the whole transaction is quick, BTC entails "just a small carry risk while holding". They sidestep the stablecoin technology, which is "risky for Iran because the top stablecoins could be freezed. They are centralized."
The latter comment was downvoted, possibly for paranoia, but Iran can't afford not to be paranoid. The major stablecoins at least claim to be custodied in Western institutions in a quasi-compliant-ish manner. If the USG started strong-arming Cantor, and so forth, who knows where that would end. Iran would much rather live with a tiny taste of BTC price volatility.
- Iran is threading the needle, working within the limited options they have in a US-dominated world economy.
- The death of the petrodollar is slightly exaggerated here, although it's a small symbolic step, and obviously the broader war is going to have implications for US hegemony.
I'm not sure I follow your logic, but one could argue this campaign with drones and cheaper missiles taught Iran it doesn't even need a nuclear deterrent anymore.
Between this and Ukraine, the logic of a nuclear warhead deterrent might be considered a paradigm relic from 20th century.
I agree that you are correct in this statement, althought if USA or Israel decided to nuke a country without a MAD recourse, that would be another can of worms. There's multiple reasons no country did that after Hiroshima. Even Russia refrained themselves of doing that in Ukraine after all these years.
Allow me to do a slight modification on my assessment: Iran found out they won't need a nuclear deterrent to avoid ANY future aggression; modern, cheap drones and conventional missile loadouts will do just fine. Money they would continue spending on nuclear enrichment can be better spent elsewhere, military.
I would be surprised if they could get it out of their airspace considering their country is heavily monitored. Every target hit was probably known for years and years, their routines and what they do.
A large segment of the Iranian political class bet their reputations on the nuclear non-proliferation deal with the US in 2015. They've all now been utterly discredited and the hardliners proven correct in all of their predictions.
They can look at Ukraine who bitterly regrets giving up their nuclear weapons, or North Korea, seemingly invulnerable despite being the most pariah of pariah states.
From the perspective of the Iranian state, it would be idiotic and irresponsible not to try to make a nuclear weapon in these conditions.
That didn't keep them from getting bombed for a month, and their senior leadership all killed. It just let them punch back a little bit. Not an equal amount, just a little bit.
I did a double-take at it being Bitcoin fees, since you'd think they'd want some stablecoin (even if not USD) so as to avoid inheriting the volatility, but no, they want Bitcoin specifically:
>“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,” FT reported, citing Hosseini.
I think this war will be the moment that historians mark as the death of Pax Americana. The US failed to change the Iranian regime, failed to open the strait, and now a previously international waterway will be tolled in a currency other than the dollar.
That's far too hyperbolic. Abject failures don't lead to state or power collapse. Look at how many wars the Romans lost, and far more catastrophically too.
From the article: "The crisis strengthened Nasser's standing and led to international humiliation for the British—with historians arguing that it signified the end of its role as a superpower—as well as the French amid the Cold War."
I’d say there is a credible case for saying the vote for 2nd round of trump was the turning point. By that point is was already pretty well established that he isn’t fit yet that’s what the public wanted.
The democrats deserve a fair share of the blame for that just for their having created and maintained the two-party duopoly along with the Republicans. At the very least its not the voters fault if the only viable alternative to the Republicans is constantly rigging (or in this case straight-up bypassing) their own primaries to put corrupt party insiders at the forefront.
The root cause is the first-past-the-post voting system that ensures a two-party system.
But for the party with the most responsibility for blowing it all up I'd like to nominate Rupert Murdoch. Most visibly with Fox News, but really his entire media empire
Sure, everyone deserves some share of the blame, but it's like 10% for the Ds and 90% Rs. We can't keep talking like it's 50/50, that's how people become completely disenchanted with politics and don't even bother to vote.
TBF, Iran is saying an exorbitant price right now, but in reality they will need to balance their price with demand to bring in the maximum possible revenue. The toll may work out in the long run.
Very Large Crude Carriers carry ~2 million barrels of oil. Ultra Large Crude Carriers double that. If oil went down to $50/Bbl, that $2 million fee amounts to a ~2% tax per ship, given their cargo capacity. It's not particularly exorbitant, especially given that the entire reason they proposed this toll was to fund their rebuilding efforts (Americans and Israelis did a lot of damage that's been under-reported and ignored)
This conflict has been an interesting case of watching mass hysteria interact with propaganda in the newform, rapid pace of media that exists in the internet age. The amount of wild conjecture, speculation, misinformation is the most extreme I've ever seen it, eclipsing even the 6 months of nonsense that was spurred on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The 2% is the camel's nose. They are establishing that they tax the Strait traffic and there is no longer freedom of navigation. Once it is a done deal, the deal will be altered...
AFAIK they only let two ships pass before closing it again due to Israeli strikes on Lebanon, so in effect the strait is still closed and likely to remain so.
I think the price can only increase. There is not much competition for Hormuz. If it is exorbitant now, it can only be more expensive later on. The demand for oil is not going to go down drastically for quite a few years.
If there was another route, the oil would have found the way.
Pipelines are incredibly vulnerable to being taken offline by an inexpensive long-range strike. You can't just put them in the middle of a war zone, especially when we (the US) have targeted that same type of infrastructure first.
Pipelines are usually buried under the ground. Pumping statins could be protected by short range SAM systems. An undegraund pipeline can be destroyed by a heavy glide bomd (not an option for Iran) but should be relatively safe from shahed drones. Iran's ballistic rockets are not precise enough to hit a pipeline wihtout spending multiple rockets (in which case it would be cheaper to repair the pipeline than to produce all these rockets).
sure, as the oil wells and the pumping stations and everything not underground, but right now there's not even an option to try. (also loss of a pipe section compared to the loss of a tanker is much better economically, easy to replace, not to mention that there's no loss of life, so ultimately it can bear more risk even if there's an active conflict.)
None of those have near the capacity to replace what was flowing through the Straight and will not replace the Straight for a long time. That's the whole problem.
If there were viable alternatives to the Straight, the US would have attacked Iran decades ago. Every US administration has had people in the wings desperate to "Fix" the Iran situation, but only Trump was stupid enough to try it.
Meanwhile, the actual production is meaningfully damaged, and for at least a couple years.
In time pipelines can be made, no? 2 million per ship already gives a lot of room for exorbitant infrastructure projects to break even in the medium term
Pipelines take years, even decades, at least here in Canada. You'd be surprised at how many billions of dollars and person-years of labour you need to get the thing turned on.
The problem is the fee has nothing material to do with the straight itself. There are no maintenance costs for the open sea. Coordination is also not a big concern, you can tell because previously ships were able to pass without incident and coordinate among themselves.
Actually, this is extortion. Meaning that it is done under threat of violence. Worse yet, the US military may end up enforcing this, and collecting on a share of the fees.
It won't take very long for Iran to recoup the damages. After that, why keep the fees going? Because it's free money, that's why.
The strange this is, if the US and Iran can partner on this, that would lead to a weird peace, because they both stand to benefit, meanwhile countries that depend on the straight (Korea, Japan, etc.) have to pay the bill.
> There are no maintenance costs for the open sea.
There are massive maintenance costs for the open sea with how we utilize it. Maritime security and policing, navigational infrastructure, weather reporting, radio repeaters, international bureaucracy, etc.
Global maritime trade is extremely costly. It's simply hidden behind opaque public spending on things you don't think about. In all likelihood it's a sunk cost that would ballpark around a few hundred billion dollars annually, invisible money spent just to keep things running at the scale and reliability that they do.
Now the maritime traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz may only partially overlap with this spending, but people greatly overestimate just how "cheap" maritime activity actually is.
I don't think this count as open sea. The rule is 12 miles from the coast (12 nautical miles btw, i don't know what it is in freedom units). i'm pretty sure the strait is narrower than that at the place where the toll is paid (if you count both side, i.e less than 24 miles Between Oman's peninsula i forgot the name of, and Hormuz/Qeshm islands).
So basically, Iran say "here, you have to pass through our or Oman's waters, we will let you, but please pay a toll for the derangement, that we will share with Oman."
not really; you would have to pay to run an oil pipeline through another country's territory even if that country wasn't bearing the cost of maintaining the oil pipeline
the strait isn't international waters -- it's part of Iran and Oman's territorial waters
For land pipelines thiere no eqauvalent of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea according to which both Oman and Iran should allow free passage of ships. And "normal" path lies on Oman's waters which dones't stop Iran from attacking ships there. The strait toll is a pure racketeering.
You make it sound that there are only two sides in this story.
Spain, Argentina, Kenya, Indonesia, Kuwait and countless other countries haven't bombed any civilian infrastructure either and yet they will be affected by the aggressive posture around international maritime traffic.
Are you expecting that Iran will not apply the fee to ships that sell oil Malesia or South Africa?
Their only defense against being bombed was using their geopolitical position to its advantage. Their own civilian infrastructure was bombed by the US-Israel axis, with the support of the Gulf states.
I fully expect Iran to apply fees on every ship going through, and they should.
Spain, Argentina, Kenya, Indonesia and countless other countries are paying for the aggressive and reckless actions of the US-Israel axis.
That's the situation of the country where I live btw. I don't blame Iran for using the weapons at their disposal for survival, I blame the rogue states that attacked Iran and forced their hand. Let's not forget that Iran could have done it at any time in the past decades, and showed restraint in doing so, even with all the sanctions and Israeli aggression.
You forgot that now Iran will become a nuclear state.
An American Iranian expert which studied this region for 20 years predicted that Iran will do a nuclear test in September, ahead of the mid-term elections. We'll see.
No air war has changed a regime. The US government knows this. Trump knows this and never had regime change as an objective. Why are you saying that regime change was an objective, and how do you think it was going to happen in an air war when no air war has caused a regime change before?
Little correction: Trump has a different objective every second day, and at some point there was (also) regime change on the menu. Might come again, I don't know.
Trump was talking about the protests there and that the US would help them. And we kept killing Iranian leadership lol.
Why are you taking what the Trump admin says at face value, anyways? Are you still a fool after all these years? This is like "fool me a 10,000th time" by now haaha
What he says matches to reality: that regime change isn't possible with an air war. Thus even if you don't listen to him, we know from prior experience that regime change is highly improbable. Every person educated about these things knows that.
I think it’s weird that you imply that it is because the American regime failed to change the Iranian regime. They (lead by Israel or not) illegally invaded a country.
It’s just Pax for those parts of the world that America and its allies are not invading (and other non-allied examples like Russia invading Ukraine).
But a typical top-comment about how America Did a Bad Thing Which Ruined The Good American-lead Times.
I can't believe that the toll will actually be paid - it would turn Iran into an INSANELY wealthy superpower and easily give them the funds to hugely increase their availability to fund groups like hezbollah etc.
I personally think is the US's Teutoburg Forest moment [1]. Rome was capable of rebuilding legions. After all, they'd done so historically (eg after the Battle of Cannae [2]) but Teutoburg really exposed the rot and dysfunction within the Rome. I personally believe this event will be a turning point in redefining the relationships with Europe, the Gulf states and Israel.
Details on this deal are sketchy but it seems like Iran will continue charging a toll for the Strait of Hormuz (of approximately $1/barrel). You hear figures like $2 million but bear in mind that VLCCs/ULCCs can carry 2M+ barrels of oil. Also, it seems like there will be significant sanctions relief.
Here's the problem: how does Iran get paid? Normally that would be through international payments systems but the US exerts a lot of control over those and can freeze assets as they've done in the past. Part of the payments under the previous JCPOA [3] were to return money paid to Iran for oil where those payments had been frozen. Russia got locked out of SWIFT after the Ukraine invasion [4] as another example.
So I see this as a defensive and potentially temporary move to avoid the risk of asset seizure and freezing should hostilities resume. Iran may well end up with access to international payments systems again in the coming weeks, at which point this could all change.
It is interesting that crypto is being used for this but that just goes to the point that the use case for crypto is to bypass laws. That's no different here.
I am afraid that soon, actual sea pirates, e.g. in Central and South America, Africa, etc. will start using naval mines in their regional seas, demanding crypto payment from passing ships.
If it was just to 'hide' payments then they could just use USD and using crypto would just be an improvement in convenience. A bigger reason is that they won't be indirectly attacked with monetary policy and that the acceptance of USD with entities willing to do business with them is probably low right now.
The person launching them sure does. This scenario reminds me of the time Russian hackers took over a US pipeline a couple years ago then immediately apologized saying they didn't want to cause a international incident and they would vet their targets better in the future. There are not many people who want that kind of heat. Like the first ayatollah is dead and the second is reportedly in a coma. The Iranian government is willing to pay that price and that's why they won. How many pirate leaders do you think are willing to pay their life so that their third of fourth successors can maybe collect a toll? Or how many are like Venezuela and you can kidnap one guy and the whole house folds.
Cryptocurrency has had many legal real world uses cases. It is used heavily in prediction markets. Serving as an inflation-resistant store of value that is orthogonal to gold also is an implicit real world use case. Permissionless and easy international transfer of funds between individuals has been the biggest real world use. It's not only for collecting and trading. Obviously, those wanting to suppress it will keep finding excuses.
Some bets are less gambling than others. For example, if you bet "no" on the US leaving NATO this year, just how much of a gamble is that? There are many such bets, some a lot less uncertain than this example. Anything can happen in today's environment as yesterday's ceasefire showed, but in aggregate, statistics and commonsense are not lost. The regulation you speak of is oppressive, legally unchallenged, and is considered undesirable by people who appreciate personal freedom.
'It's not gambling. Look at what a sure thing this bet is!'. Again, wild.
The regulation is often at the state level, the most representative form of legislation possible, often varying from state to state creating the freest system/market where you can chose to live in a less or more regulated state.
When at the federal level it is as the DIRECT result of the social impact it previously caused not because the government just wanted to restrict freedom but freedom was tried and in this situation not sustainable on a societal level.
The same people have no idea what's coming for them even when it's in their face as with the posted news article. If the US doesn't act now to restore the use of USD in Hormuz, it's the beginning of the end of the for the USD as a currency for international trade.
Feels like the Trump / Binance situation is under appreciated at the moment...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/technology/binance-employ...
> People in Iran had gained access to more than 1,500 accounts on the Binance platform over the previous year. About $1.7 billion had flowed from two Binance accounts to Iranian entities with links to terrorist groups, a possible violation of global sanctions. And one of those accounts belonged to a Binance vendor.
> After uncovering the transactions, the investigators reported them to top executives, according to company records and other documents reviewed by The New York Times.
> Within weeks, Binance fired or suspended at least four employees involved in the investigation, according to the documents and three people with knowledge of the situation. The company cited issues such as “violations of company protocol” related to the handling of client data.
[..]
> But internal warnings about the Iranian transactions surfaced last year, in the months before President Trump granted a pardon to Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, who had spent four months in federal prison in 2024 for his role in the firm’s crimes. The Trump family’s crypto start-up, World Liberty Financial, has forged close business ties with Binance, and Mr. Zhao was a guest this month at a conference at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla.
A "few seconds" to pay in bitcoin? So the captain is supposed to be watching for a response via email with his finger hovering over the pay button? Is the recipient address static? Surely they would use unique payment addresses if they have any hope of obfuscating payments.
This all sounds more like a TV show script than an actual thought-out plan to me.
The payments are going to a government. They're not using bitcoin to hide the payments, they're using it because receiving USD or Euros or whatever would mean that a hostile government could seize the funds from the bank.
The tracking is unique though. I don't know who had the $20 in my wallet before me or what series of payments it was a part of, but crypto has the curious property that over time, essentially all crypto money will have at some point passed through wallets associated with controversial entities or transactions.
WSJ reports they can pay in Chinese yuan instead of Bitcoin.
Presumably these are lightning invoices, which can resolve in milliseconds.
Is there a limit on how much the lightning network can handle? Those are pretty large transactions.
Transaction fees are based on the complexity of the inputs/outputs, not the value transacted. You are literally paying for the minimum amount of data necessary to prove you own the funded sending-address, paying to write those hashes and amounts into the blockchain. The institution handling this offchaing lightning branch can implement fees in whatever structure you agree to transact, including percentage based.
Lightning is just an off-chain out-branch, which will eventually be re-integrated onto the main blockchain (based on its original funding/terms). The benefit of this is that single entities can branch off the main blockchain, which is limited in its total blocksize/capacity.
The only limits are those by the handling lightning institution. This differs from bitcoin's main public blockchain, which rewards/creates approximately six blocks /hour, each with a limit of just a couple megabytes.
There are multiple competing lightning networks? I don't get how the lighting networks prevent double spending then.
It seems like a major issue when dealing with multimillion dollar transactions.
Lightning is a protocol and there can theoretically be many disjoint networks. The biggest network is usually what's considered to be 'the' lightning network. Double spending, which would require 'settling' a superseded lightning transaction, is prevented by a penalty mechanism that makes it so the malicious party loses all the funds in their 'channel' when caught (which will be, at smallest, the amount the original payment was made for).
I'm still thrown. I don't see how an after the fact penalty can work.
Let's say I have 1 BTC. I buy something for 1 BTC on lightning network A. Simultaneously (within nanoseconds) I buy something for 1 BTC on lightning network B. I never plan to use BTC again (or if I do, I will use a different wallet, etc.) Do I just get two purchases? Is there a meta-network clearing house, and if so, why are there many disjoint networks.
Or do I need to have moved my BTC into the lightning network A or B before I spend it?
On the main chain, bitcoin transactions can have "scripts" that describes who and under what condition this money can be spent.
You have to lock your bitcoin on the main chain in a script that shares the bitcoin between you, and another lightning network user (typically a hub)
The trick is that a lightning transaction happen by signing transactions to the other party that changes the way the bitcoins are split, without broadcasting it to the main chain. You only broadcast to the main chain when you want to unlock the bitcoin. Broadcasting an earlier transaction will result of you losing the found because subsequent transaction contains secrets that allow the other party to take them.
Once you've allocated BTC, you cannot doublespend it elsewhere (well, you can try, but verification nodes will reject it so the blockchain will never accept).
> Transaction fees are based on the complexity of the inputs/outputs, not the value transacted
Not on the lightning network. Fees are used to incentivize or disincentivize routes across channels.
> The institution handling this offchaing lightning branch can implement fees in whatever structure you agree to transact, including percentage based.
No institution is needed. Even if one is used as an intermediary, when using lightning non-custodially, the economics of lightning are such that fees are determined by the nodes in the payer's desired route. If it's a custodial transfer from one user to another, no routes are needed.
The record for lightning is $1m recently https://www.tradingview.com/news/financemagnates:db022676a09...
I imagine the seconds to pay won't be true - if they are exchanging emails and inspecting boats it's going to be an hours to days long process.
No way they're boarding boats. They can get an accurate enough cargo weight within seconds visually (maybe minutes, depending on how computerized it is)
Why would you want to obfuscate payments if you can track how many ships entered the gulf using transponders? Regarding money laundering, you use Tornado Cash or Monero
> So the captain is supposed to be watching for a response via email with his finger hovering over the pay button?
no, mate
Is that a friendly response to the question, or are you saying it's actually the captain's second-in-command who watches the email?
It is interesting in several different ways, because I was speculating on how it is being done before current cease fire. Everything seemed to be point to Yuan ( or other non-USD currencies ), which then are more easily settled by vessel owners and likely buried under some non-descript names like fees to be , maybe, questioned later its all done.
edit: And it seems I was wrong despite it being my initial thought in terms of used rail.
It's a sad indictment of the RMB that Iran would rather use BTC for bypassing US sanctions.
Iran is already quite dependent on the PRoC as a trading partner; using RMB as their primary currency for these payments would further increase their 'counter-party risk'. That said, RMB exchange-rate manipulation may also be a significant factor in their decision.
I don't think RMB is freely convertible to hard currency without Chinese permission. Bitcoin largely is.
Does this mean ceasefire is now broken? The 10 point plan was to be discussed later in the peace talks, but what was the exact conditions that predicated the ceasefire?
Isn't it broken with Israel continuing their war against Lebanon?
The ceasefire agreement was mediated by Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan. He announced yesterday that the US and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon. They agreed to base negotiations on Iran's 10-point proposal. [1] Trump released his own statement that the US was agreeing to the ceasefire, again using Iran's 10-point proposal as a basis. [2] Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would comply with the ceasefire. [3] Hours later, Israel carried out a brutal strike on dense commercial and residential areas in Southern Lebanon without warning, killing at least 254 people and injuring more than 1,000 others. [4] The IRGC announced that if Trump didn't rein in Israel, Iran would exit the ceasefire arrangement. [5] Trump then told a reporter that Lebanon was not in the deal, contradicting Sharif's statement. [6] In response, Iran's speaker of the parliament released a statement outlining how the US had violated three of Iran's 10 points and that he viewed a bilateral ceasefire as now being unreasonable. [7]
[1] https://x.com/CMShehbaz/status/2041665043423752651
[2] https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1163657967133...
[3] https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/2041714151374856232
[4] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/8/hundreds-of-casualti...
[5] https://x.com/Tasnimnews_EN/status/2041886432239788297
[6] https://x.com/ElizLanders/status/2041878299454955640
[7] https://x.com/mb_ghalibaf/status/2041943537386958858
> Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would comply with the ceasefire. [3]
That's not really what the source says. There is no ceasefire agreement in force at all (only a basis for negotiations with Iran), let alone one that covers Hezbollah.
You're right that Netanyahu's statement contradicts Sharif's statement, which says that "the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies" agreed to the immediate ceasefire. It makes me wonder what was going on behind the scenes.
Definitively if they agreed to it as part of the ceasefire. What did each part actually agree to when they agreed to a ceasefire? There doesn't seem to be much concrete information about that part.
I think Trump and the Iranians agreed to two different ceasefires and now both pretend they won.
You can watch Nixon's speeches on YouTube. He certainly tried to spin the Vietnam war...
But ultimately Nixon was right. America getting out of Vietnam was a good thing.
Seem now like both are also saying that the other side has now broken the ceasefire. Two different ceasefires are not a very stable ground.
I think only the US is not bombing anyone for the time being. I think, and hope, they will slowly pull out of there and not fuck up the status quo any further.
The US can’t just walk away now because the straight is not open / secure for trade ships.
They can. It would be a defeat, but at least it would be a less costly defeat than Afghanistan.
As best I can tell, the Iranian regime and Sharif both said that they ceasefire included a cease to strikes on Lebanon, Netanyahu explicitly said that it did not, and the Trump admin, Lebanon, and Hezbollah have not yet commented either way.
Links to Pakistan and Israel statements here: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/8/us-iran-ceasefire-de...
Iran is ATM saying it closed the Strait again, implied that it will wait until Israel stand down at least.
Even if USA insist on Israel-Hezbollah (and so Lebanon) be kept apart from any deal to end their war in Iran, it would still mean a terrible strategic and diplomatic disaster between USA and Israel, because Israel Gov' will be left with two terrible scenarios:
1) Trump Admin' will concede to Iran they'd be leaving the region and leaving Israel to defend itself alone, because the Hormuz being open for business and the Gulf states being spared would be enough; or
2) USA will have to resume hostilities, meaning domestically Trump will have to explain the US Military is obliged to continue the war effort for as long as Israel want.
IMHO don't see how Israel-US can politically survive those two scenarios.
> IMHO don't see how Israel-US can politically survive those two scenarios.
Is that such a bad thing?
Probably for the actual innocent people who live in Israel , yes
Maybe Iran will avoid Palestinian parts.
Israel is a modern day Nazi Germany. I wouldn't call anyone there over the age of 18 "innocent".
I think that's unfair. There are some people with sane politics there, although it's definitely a small minority. For example: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/taylor-swift-fan-account-twi...
Trump and Leavitt have both said that Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire
Iran gets a vote, and ceasefires need belligerents' unanimity, by definition.
Lebanon has also said that the ceasefire doesn't apply to Hezbollah, since they insist that both them and Israel are at war with Hezbollah, not with each other. The only parties that say it does are Hezbollah and Pakistan.
Also, I really wouldn't suggest using aljazeera.
I've found Al Jazeera's (English) coverage of the region to be informative. YMMV.
Honestly, it’s a good counter to get both sides of the coin. At the moment you’ll find BBC, CNN, NYT et al on one end and Al Jazeera on the other. I also look at DW for a more balanced approach. Don’t consume from one camp!
Just be aware that DW is literally government propaganda. If you want news from a German perspective, it's great; however its purpose is explicitly to give the German governments POV.
Fair call on CNN and DW, but the NYT has always been at least somewhat aligned with Al Jazeera, and the BBC switches around with whatever the current government is.
> NYT has always been at least somewhat aligned with Al Jazeera
Hard disagree: the NYT adopts a weird passive voice that goes against its house style, along with headlines with no subject when it comes to events in Gaza[1]. Al Jazeera consistently names the doers of the verbs.
1. Once you're aware of it, it becomes impossible not to notice. It is the Wilhelm scream of news coverage.
This is such an important point, and I wish it were more widely spoken about. As a daily NYT reader, I noticed a profound shift in the early days of the current admin. I might be off on the timing, curious to know what other daily NYT readers have to say. It's an incredibly effective technique given the relative subtlety, and in my experience it seems to exhaust the mental resources of the critical reader.
You're very very off on the timing: the first year of the genocide (and the majority of the official casualties) was under the previous administration. The bias on Gaza was observed across the board from the start (and arguably for the last 70 years).
NYT is also frequently silent on certain news stories that paints U.S. in a bad light that I consider noteworthy enough. Whenever I encounter a story I want to know more about I check all the mainstream reporting; Reuters and CNN would have it most of the time (even if not in a neutral tone) but NYT often doesn’t cover it at all or bury it in a sentence or two in a related, milder story. Not gonna name specific instances but you can pay attention from now on and you’ll see a pattern after a while.
Al Jazeera is a private news organization mostly funded by the state of Qatar.
It is not "the other side of the coin". Qatar is very much on the US side, and opposite to Iran.
Their reporting is fine, and I typically find it more informative than the US news sources. But let's not pretend you are getting the Iranian side of the deal here.
Particularly, my favorite news sources for the war is, oddly enough, FT
Yeah, I'm really just looking for less Americanized coverage from the region. Al Jazeera is fine, I'm glad to hear any other recommendations for sources. (thanks for FT)
Out of curiosity, which news sources do you recommend/advocate for covering the middle east?
Perhaps informative as a study of institutional bias and government interference.
No? Sources? It's possible that Qatar's government has some editorial control over the Arabic content, but my understanding is that the English operations are separate.
It's the same company, English operations can't be separate.
https://factually.co/fact-checks/media/should-i-trust-al-jaz...
https://apnews.com/article/b39b94d6847f4ee6acafd6ad2da7e963
Those don't really add to your argument. The Kashmir issue sounds like a mistake that Al Jazeera tried to address. The Factually analysis indicates that Al Jazeera is generally reliable for news, with caution advised for coverage of highly-political events and editorials, which I think is typical of any media organization.
> Also, I really wouldn't suggest using aljazeera.
Yeah, I agree - I have the same objections to ajazeera that I have to RT, CNN, Fox News, NYT, etc. - they are each overwhelming pressure from controlling corporations and states that they can't shine light where it needs to be shone.
But in this case, I was really only pasting them for links to the statements by Pakistan and Iran, which I do trust them to link / quote faithfully. It wasn't meant as an endorsement of their editorial or news-gathering quality.
I suspect more fighting in Lebanon means less oil through Hormuz. Iran kept its definition of "open" vague. Everyone is keeping the pressure up during negotiations.
Maybe I'm just cynical but I have to assume someone will test the extent Iran can hold them to a payment if it doesn't want to stop maintaining the terms of the ceasefire to back up the demand?
(Edit- missing negative)
They've blown up several ships so which ship owner will test them? Spend $1m on a transit fee or risk $90m on a new tanker.
Is the US seriously going to side with Iran on a missing payment? Assuming not, is the value of the ceasefire more than $1m for Iran if a ship slyly doesn't pay or the few million if one starts a trend? As I said I might be cynical but I see layered games of chicken where some people are surprisingly risk tolerant..
Iran's terms are all ships transiting the strait have to coordinate with its military. One would assume they are monitoring ship movements, and know which ones are complying and which ones are not.
The US doesn't need to "side with Iran" on anything: ship captains, owners and insurers are free to gamble their ships and payloads against Iran's resolve and strike capabilities, my assumption is they like to predictability make money, and not losing customer's billion-dollar payloads is part of that.
Having your ship blown up won't guarantee the US will consider the ceasefire violated, history is littered with post-armistice engagements and deaths.
All very reasonable.. But plenty of odd stuff happened in maritime during covid and plenty of odd stuff related to ghost fleet.. My point is not that Exon is going to save a million my point is that it is an interesting way that I think the cease fire would come to an end if it became a stable one on other fronts. I.e. the US doesn't have to choose based on anything but what is expedient to it wanting an end to the cease fire, a boat may be from the right country with the wrong organizational finances for the mounting costs so far, and so on..
What's the incentive for a ship captain to risk this? Even if they're more confident than almost everyone else that it's a bluff and think there's a 95% chance Iran does nothing, a 5% chance of you and your crew being incinerated is a crazy risk to take.
Would you go to your normal job tomorrow if someone who has a history of carrying out threats has threatened to kill you for it?
You can't imagine someone who would go to that job simply because the owner hired a bouncer and they have a different faith in authority or really mean looking bouncers than you?
I can spend 10 minutes looking at demographics and tell you the world is not explainable if the measuring stick is my own risk tolerances.
too early to say. You always ask for more than you can possibly get in these things so that you have something to compromise on (it is stupid but that is how that game is played)
No - the Iranian's didn't say they were letting ships through for free
Israel are still murdering civilians as fast as they can spend US taxpayer dollars.
There was never going to be a ceasefire. It was just Taco Tuesday and yet another market manipulation day. Republicans and Democrats ruled by whoever has original Epstein files are just filling their boots.
https://archive.is/Fz65d
Sort of like a troll blocking a bridge and asking for payment to cross but armed with machine guns and mines
Nobody ever questions why the troll is living under a bridge.
Nobody ever asks why the troll is a troll in the first place.
”Hosseini said that each tanker must email authorities about its cargo, after which Iran will inform them of the toll to be paid in digital currencies.
“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.”
As bitcoin is quite traceable I don't see how this works if you're trying to avoid sanctions. For Iran it probably doesn't matter but for the vessel owners it probably does.
Yes, from sanctions perspective, the vessel owners seem to have more exposure than Iran -- as crazy as it sounds on the surface.
Not over lightning. Even on-chain, trustless coin swaps (or cross-chain swaps) can be made with different counterparties all over the world where transaction details are all held off-chain (pay in ethereum and receive on bitcoin for example).
Business idea - Iran Bitcoin fee intermediary. Realistically the CIA will handle this for US companies and maybe allies until they figure something out.
Didn't Tornado Cash get un-sanctioned recently? Can't you just use that?
Aren't there any chinese or russian bitcoin exchange services?
Agreed, but I wonder it if matters in practice. It's not like one can boycott bitcoins by serial number or something, is it?
Kind of: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/7966/what-are-ta...
One of Iran's demand for a peace agreement is the removal of all sanctions.
the issue is the US' ability to freeze USD bank accounts on its soil or pressuring other banks to do the same
So apart from all the geopolitics of it this line is interesting
"few seconds to pay in bitcoin, ensuring they can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions,’ Hosseini added"
Maybe I'm ignorant of Bitcoin but isn't Bitcoin transactions recorded in a public cryptographically signed ledger? Isn't that literally the opposite of "can't be traced"?
And if you knew the manifests (quantity of oil) for the ship, just the value of the bitcount transaction could be used for tracking.
Or, if you knew the bitcoin addresses, you could figure out exactly how much oil is being moved. I would think oil data analysts would love to have access to that data (if they don't already).
It’s like those podcasters that figure out who’s dating whom by looking through their Venmo.
We just need to watch for large transactions with the Iranian flag and boat emojis…
There a whole industry called on chain analysis that do this sort of work.
Cannot get to the article, so:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran-warns-tankers-they...
What is to stop the ships from lying ? I wonder if Iran will do spot check of some ships to prevent this. And will boarding ships cause Trump to have yet another breakdown ?
Even if ship displacement wasn't an observable thing, there's no real reason that empty oil ships enter the strait, and then again leave empty, after having obviously docked at an oil terminal, on any regular basis.
Public and observable information makes it trivial to make high-accuracy assessments about the veracity of the claim.
And $2m is sufficient budget to finance spot checks, especially given you'd have to apply them to an exceedingly small percentage of ships. A year salary of an average Iranian police guard is about 5k, for context.
Plus you can create a scenario where fraud being detected is prohibitively expensive, and may even result in the captain being imprisoned in Iran. I wouldn't expect a lot of lies.
Oil is heavy. The ship designs are known. You can tell approximately how full a ship is by how deep it sinks into the water/where the waterline is.
They can probably consistently lie by a small percentage and Iran let's them get the 3% discount as an acceptable loss.
Because ship displacement is really hard to disguise? It's probably like trying to sneak your friend in to the movies under your overcoat.
Lying about their cargo? Can’t lie about the weight … Probably the savings from lying about the nature of the cargo is not worth the risk of exploding..
I was under the impression that they were asking for payment in stablecoins, not bitcoin? Did they change their mind?
Given that 99% of stablecoins are USD-denominated, and that the vast, vast majority of those are custodial, Bitcoin makes much more sense for Iran.
With Iran's hyperinflation, why wouldn't USD make sense?
To add more context to what I believe the parent commenter was referring to, the vast majority of USD stablecoins are custodial, meaning the funds can be frozen arbitrarily at any time by the custodian (i.e. Circle).
This is why when cyberthreat actors steal millions in USD stablecoins by hacking a protocol or a large wallet, the very first thing they do is convert those stablecoins to something else.
I think they’re kinda mad at the US at the moment
They're risking another January-like protest if they don't stabilise their economy.
I think they don't want strengthen USD, nor risk having their assets frozen by sanctions.
I’ve heard a lot of discussion about them accepting payments in Chinese yuan. I wonder if there’s a stablecoin pegged to it.
Yeah pretty since the start of the conflict there was talk of companies could use Chinese yuan to get an pass through. It also makes more sense they would use the Chinese yuan the West can track or block those transactions.
Not only that the Chinese Yuan is probably more interesting given they can buy more things with it from China things like consumer tech/products, chemicals and rare earths for weapon systems etc.
China issued a stable coin about five years ago. It is used for all retail payments (I believe, small value, payments for govt employee salaries, etc). Somewhat bizarrely, it is significantly more privacy-protecting than payments in the West.
Quite funny to read comments from people asking what use is crypto. Can tell they have probably never left West Virgina.
Don't think it would be that useful for Iran though as they are already RMB earners, and RMB financial markets are still a bit questionable (there is depth, I don't think anyone knows why this depth exists or what it is actually for, just state-linked banks moving paper between themselves furiously).
Tether has one on ethereum but same problem if the US gov tell tether to whip their address it is game over.
China has probably one on another blockchain but I am not sure how easy it is to exit their ecosystem or convert it to anything else...
I believe the only stablecoin that is "uncensorable" is the old MakerDAO DAI (pegged to USD with vaults overcollaterised with other tokens). Not sure if there is a lot of liquidity left.
Its successor USDS has implemented all the mechanisms to censor some addresses but if I remember correctly this hasn't been activated yet.
All the other ones: USDC, USDT, EURC and the ruble one can be whipped out easily. So more risky for them than good old dollars.
Please correct me if I missed something.
You can issue any stablecoin via bitcoins taproot asset protocol. Transfer even over lightning. Thus it is uncensorable. USDT has this enabled.
Indeed, very interesting !
Apparently it is very recent [0]
Now I am still wondering, does the taproot asset protocol make it really uncensorable? because on Ethereum an address can be blacklisted by Tether and the USDT frozen (through the ERC20 contract I believe).
And I would be a bit surprise that Tether, which is more and more integrated and compliant with regulations, would start minting USDT on a system that doesn't have an asset freezing mechanism...
- [0] https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/03-31-2026-tether-rei...
That would be very risky for Iran because the top stablecoins could be freezed. They are centralized.
No. Welcome to the petrobitcoin economy.
Edit: Piecing together from other comments, it sounds like these tolls are denominated in USD ($1 per barrel), but as an implementation detail, they're charging in BTC as the instrument of choice, not a stablecoin.
They phrase the tolls in USD "so the price is stable", and since the whole transaction is quick, BTC entails "just a small carry risk while holding". They sidestep the stablecoin technology, which is "risky for Iran because the top stablecoins could be freezed. They are centralized."
The latter comment was downvoted, possibly for paranoia, but Iran can't afford not to be paranoid. The major stablecoins at least claim to be custodied in Western institutions in a quasi-compliant-ish manner. If the USG started strong-arming Cantor, and so forth, who knows where that would end. Iran would much rather live with a tiny taste of BTC price volatility.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47692874
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47691369
So my read of this is:
- Iran is threading the needle, working within the limited options they have in a US-dominated world economy.
- The death of the petrodollar is slightly exaggerated here, although it's a small symbolic step, and obviously the broader war is going to have implications for US hegemony.
Smart of them, hardest currency in existence and USD avoided, and no possible issues.
Iran taking USD bribe instead of obtaining nukes made it worse for them in long run.
I'm not sure I follow your logic, but one could argue this campaign with drones and cheaper missiles taught Iran it doesn't even need a nuclear deterrent anymore.
Between this and Ukraine, the logic of a nuclear warhead deterrent might be considered a paradigm relic from 20th century.
This is false. If Trump had chosen to nuke Iranian cities, Iran would have had no recourse without a proper nuclear bomb.
I agree that you are correct in this statement, althought if USA or Israel decided to nuke a country without a MAD recourse, that would be another can of worms. There's multiple reasons no country did that after Hiroshima. Even Russia refrained themselves of doing that in Ukraine after all these years.
Allow me to do a slight modification on my assessment: Iran found out they won't need a nuclear deterrent to avoid ANY future aggression; modern, cheap drones and conventional missile loadouts will do just fine. Money they would continue spending on nuclear enrichment can be better spent elsewhere, military.
I would be surprised if they could get it out of their airspace considering their country is heavily monitored. Every target hit was probably known for years and years, their routines and what they do.
Iran's nuclear bomb is to take out desalination plants in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia. It would be game over for the GCC.
A large segment of the Iranian political class bet their reputations on the nuclear non-proliferation deal with the US in 2015. They've all now been utterly discredited and the hardliners proven correct in all of their predictions.
They can look at Ukraine who bitterly regrets giving up their nuclear weapons, or North Korea, seemingly invulnerable despite being the most pariah of pariah states.
From the perspective of the Iranian state, it would be idiotic and irresponsible not to try to make a nuclear weapon in these conditions.
"From the perspective of the Iranian state" Well you say that but they have got a non-nuclear nuke equivalent in the form of kamikaze drones.
That didn't keep them from getting bombed for a month, and their senior leadership all killed. It just let them punch back a little bit. Not an equal amount, just a little bit.
So, no, not a "nuke equivalent".
> North Korea, seemingly invulnerable
Because of China not because of the nukes.
Things couldn't have been worse for the average Iranian before that, so nothing can really make it worse for them.
The FT trying to push markets and capital again? If they do everyone can just track their bitcoin transactions..
I did a double-take at it being Bitcoin fees, since you'd think they'd want some stablecoin (even if not USD) so as to avoid inheriting the volatility, but no, they want Bitcoin specifically:
>“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,” FT reported, citing Hosseini.
https://beincrypto.com/iran-bitcoin-toll-hormuz-strait-tanke...
Paid in bitcoins denominated in USD so the price is stable, just a small carry risk while holding.
Oh, that's why Bitcoin is going up suddenly now hey???
Bitcoin is in a side trend. It's slightly up because it follows the equity market. Nothing indicates an increased demand yet.
No. Afaik only _two_ ships crossed in last 24 hours meaning its all idle speculaion.
I think this war will be the moment that historians mark as the death of Pax Americana. The US failed to change the Iranian regime, failed to open the strait, and now a previously international waterway will be tolled in a currency other than the dollar.
I wish it need not have happened in my time
This war will be to the US what the Suez Crisis was to the United Kingdom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis
That's far too hyperbolic. Abject failures don't lead to state or power collapse. Look at how many wars the Romans lost, and far more catastrophically too.
From the article: "The crisis strengthened Nasser's standing and led to international humiliation for the British—with historians arguing that it signified the end of its role as a superpower—as well as the French amid the Cold War."
It then has seven different citations after it.
TIL about one more time Israel was invading it's neighbors..
You should focus on the part where Egypt blockaded the Suez and Straits of Tiran, which is what actually caused the war.
I’d say there is a credible case for saying the vote for 2nd round of trump was the turning point. By that point is was already pretty well established that he isn’t fit yet that’s what the public wanted.
The democrats deserve a fair share of the blame for that just for their having created and maintained the two-party duopoly along with the Republicans. At the very least its not the voters fault if the only viable alternative to the Republicans is constantly rigging (or in this case straight-up bypassing) their own primaries to put corrupt party insiders at the forefront.
The root cause is the first-past-the-post voting system that ensures a two-party system.
But for the party with the most responsibility for blowing it all up I'd like to nominate Rupert Murdoch. Most visibly with Fox News, but really his entire media empire
> The root cause is the first-past-the-post voting system that ensures a two-party system.
Hear, hear.
I'm rooting for the fast uptake of STV across the US.
Yet another reminder that we need approval voting, or even STAR voting, for single-winner elections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU https://www.equal.vote/approval https://www.equal.vote/beyond_rcv_zine
Sure, everyone deserves some share of the blame, but it's like 10% for the Ds and 90% Rs. We can't keep talking like it's 50/50, that's how people become completely disenchanted with politics and don't even bother to vote.
TBF, Iran is saying an exorbitant price right now, but in reality they will need to balance their price with demand to bring in the maximum possible revenue. The toll may work out in the long run.
Very Large Crude Carriers carry ~2 million barrels of oil. Ultra Large Crude Carriers double that. If oil went down to $50/Bbl, that $2 million fee amounts to a ~2% tax per ship, given their cargo capacity. It's not particularly exorbitant, especially given that the entire reason they proposed this toll was to fund their rebuilding efforts (Americans and Israelis did a lot of damage that's been under-reported and ignored)
This conflict has been an interesting case of watching mass hysteria interact with propaganda in the newform, rapid pace of media that exists in the internet age. The amount of wild conjecture, speculation, misinformation is the most extreme I've ever seen it, eclipsing even the 6 months of nonsense that was spurred on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The 2% is the camel's nose. They are establishing that they tax the Strait traffic and there is no longer freedom of navigation. Once it is a done deal, the deal will be altered...
If that’s right, 2% indeed doesn’t sound bad. Especially since it’s supposed to be split with Oman.
AFAIK they only let two ships pass before closing it again due to Israeli strikes on Lebanon, so in effect the strait is still closed and likely to remain so.
I read Lebanon wasn’t part of the deal, so…
Where did you read this?
Who were they quoting?
I think the price can only increase. There is not much competition for Hormuz. If it is exorbitant now, it can only be more expensive later on. The demand for oil is not going to go down drastically for quite a few years.
If there was another route, the oil would have found the way.
There are already pipelines in the region.
pipelines, railway, etc.
had the US had any real plan to empower the Gulf states against Iran there would already be backup routes
Pipelines are incredibly vulnerable to being taken offline by an inexpensive long-range strike. You can't just put them in the middle of a war zone, especially when we (the US) have targeted that same type of infrastructure first.
Pipelines are usually buried under the ground. Pumping statins could be protected by short range SAM systems. An undegraund pipeline can be destroyed by a heavy glide bomd (not an option for Iran) but should be relatively safe from shahed drones. Iran's ballistic rockets are not precise enough to hit a pipeline wihtout spending multiple rockets (in which case it would be cheaper to repair the pipeline than to produce all these rockets).
sure, as the oil wells and the pumping stations and everything not underground, but right now there's not even an option to try. (also loss of a pipe section compared to the loss of a tanker is much better economically, easy to replace, not to mention that there's no loss of life, so ultimately it can bear more risk even if there's an active conflict.)
None of those have near the capacity to replace what was flowing through the Straight and will not replace the Straight for a long time. That's the whole problem.
If there were viable alternatives to the Straight, the US would have attacked Iran decades ago. Every US administration has had people in the wings desperate to "Fix" the Iran situation, but only Trump was stupid enough to try it.
Meanwhile, the actual production is meaningfully damaged, and for at least a couple years.
This is an energy crisis.
In time pipelines can be made, no? 2 million per ship already gives a lot of room for exorbitant infrastructure projects to break even in the medium term
Pipelines take years, even decades, at least here in Canada. You'd be surprised at how many billions of dollars and person-years of labour you need to get the thing turned on.
Five years at 2mil per ship will make Iran rich.
The problem is the fee has nothing material to do with the straight itself. There are no maintenance costs for the open sea. Coordination is also not a big concern, you can tell because previously ships were able to pass without incident and coordinate among themselves.
Actually, this is extortion. Meaning that it is done under threat of violence. Worse yet, the US military may end up enforcing this, and collecting on a share of the fees.
It won't take very long for Iran to recoup the damages. After that, why keep the fees going? Because it's free money, that's why.
The strange this is, if the US and Iran can partner on this, that would lead to a weird peace, because they both stand to benefit, meanwhile countries that depend on the straight (Korea, Japan, etc.) have to pay the bill.
> There are no maintenance costs for the open sea.
There are massive maintenance costs for the open sea with how we utilize it. Maritime security and policing, navigational infrastructure, weather reporting, radio repeaters, international bureaucracy, etc.
Global maritime trade is extremely costly. It's simply hidden behind opaque public spending on things you don't think about. In all likelihood it's a sunk cost that would ballpark around a few hundred billion dollars annually, invisible money spent just to keep things running at the scale and reliability that they do.
Now the maritime traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz may only partially overlap with this spending, but people greatly overestimate just how "cheap" maritime activity actually is.
I don't think this count as open sea. The rule is 12 miles from the coast (12 nautical miles btw, i don't know what it is in freedom units). i'm pretty sure the strait is narrower than that at the place where the toll is paid (if you count both side, i.e less than 24 miles Between Oman's peninsula i forgot the name of, and Hormuz/Qeshm islands).
So basically, Iran say "here, you have to pass through our or Oman's waters, we will let you, but please pay a toll for the derangement, that we will share with Oman."
> extortion
not really; you would have to pay to run an oil pipeline through another country's territory even if that country wasn't bearing the cost of maintaining the oil pipeline
the strait isn't international waters -- it's part of Iran and Oman's territorial waters
For land pipelines thiere no eqauvalent of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea according to which both Oman and Iran should allow free passage of ships. And "normal" path lies on Oman's waters which dones't stop Iran from attacking ships there. The strait toll is a pure racketeering.
What does the UN convention says about killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure?
I think any such pretenses were abandoned right off the start.
You make it sound that there are only two sides in this story.
Spain, Argentina, Kenya, Indonesia, Kuwait and countless other countries haven't bombed any civilian infrastructure either and yet they will be affected by the aggressive posture around international maritime traffic.
Are you expecting that Iran will not apply the fee to ships that sell oil Malesia or South Africa?
For the Iranian perspective it doesn't matter.
Their only defense against being bombed was using their geopolitical position to its advantage. Their own civilian infrastructure was bombed by the US-Israel axis, with the support of the Gulf states.
I fully expect Iran to apply fees on every ship going through, and they should.
Spain, Argentina, Kenya, Indonesia and countless other countries are paying for the aggressive and reckless actions of the US-Israel axis.
That's the situation of the country where I live btw. I don't blame Iran for using the weapons at their disposal for survival, I blame the rogue states that attacked Iran and forced their hand. Let's not forget that Iran could have done it at any time in the past decades, and showed restraint in doing so, even with all the sanctions and Israeli aggression.
The UNCLOS, you say? Guess which two countries haven't signed/ratified it: US and Israel.
So yeah, I don't see Iran paying much attention to the UNCLOS.
Trump promised the most crypto-friendly US administration ever, but this is probably not what Republicans had in mind.
You forgot that now Iran will become a nuclear state.
An American Iranian expert which studied this region for 20 years predicted that Iran will do a nuclear test in September, ahead of the mid-term elections. We'll see.
For all intents and purposes, they have been a nuclear state for 30 years.
The toll is not going to happen. Iran has plenty of demands regarding the ceasefire and will get almost none of them.
No air war has changed a regime. The US government knows this. Trump knows this and never had regime change as an objective. Why are you saying that regime change was an objective, and how do you think it was going to happen in an air war when no air war has caused a regime change before?
> Trump knows this
This statement is very rarely true.
Little correction: Trump has a different objective every second day, and at some point there was (also) regime change on the menu. Might come again, I don't know.
Trump was talking about the protests there and that the US would help them. And we kept killing Iranian leadership lol.
Why are you taking what the Trump admin says at face value, anyways? Are you still a fool after all these years? This is like "fool me a 10,000th time" by now haaha
What he says matches to reality: that regime change isn't possible with an air war. Thus even if you don't listen to him, we know from prior experience that regime change is highly improbable. Every person educated about these things knows that.
The contemplated (and moved!) ground troops for weeks lol.
No air war has ever tried to change a regime. The fact of the matter is, we don't know what will happen next. There could very well be a civil war.
I think it’s weird that you imply that it is because the American regime failed to change the Iranian regime. They (lead by Israel or not) illegally invaded a country.
It’s just Pax for those parts of the world that America and its allies are not invading (and other non-allied examples like Russia invading Ukraine).
But a typical top-comment about how America Did a Bad Thing Which Ruined The Good American-lead Times.
> It’s just Pax for those parts of the world that America and its allies are not invading
Aren't you making the very point you purport to refute? What's so different about this than Rome circa 50 BC? They even invaded Persia!
I can't believe that the toll will actually be paid - it would turn Iran into an INSANELY wealthy superpower and easily give them the funds to hugely increase their availability to fund groups like hezbollah etc.
I read that it could add up to $80 billion/year, at most.
According to Wikipedia their current budget is roughly 40bn usd, so it would triple their budget.
This fascination with ignoring that everyone in this disaster is the 'bad guy' (yeah including the US) is very bizarre.
I personally think is the US's Teutoburg Forest moment [1]. Rome was capable of rebuilding legions. After all, they'd done so historically (eg after the Battle of Cannae [2]) but Teutoburg really exposed the rot and dysfunction within the Rome. I personally believe this event will be a turning point in redefining the relationships with Europe, the Gulf states and Israel.
Details on this deal are sketchy but it seems like Iran will continue charging a toll for the Strait of Hormuz (of approximately $1/barrel). You hear figures like $2 million but bear in mind that VLCCs/ULCCs can carry 2M+ barrels of oil. Also, it seems like there will be significant sanctions relief.
Here's the problem: how does Iran get paid? Normally that would be through international payments systems but the US exerts a lot of control over those and can freeze assets as they've done in the past. Part of the payments under the previous JCPOA [3] were to return money paid to Iran for oil where those payments had been frozen. Russia got locked out of SWIFT after the Ukraine invasion [4] as another example.
So I see this as a defensive and potentially temporary move to avoid the risk of asset seizure and freezing should hostilities resume. Iran may well end up with access to international payments systems again in the coming weeks, at which point this could all change.
It is interesting that crypto is being used for this but that just goes to the point that the use case for crypto is to bypass laws. That's no different here.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWIFT_ban_against_Russian_bank...
The point of crypto is to cut out the middleman, to bypass authoritarianism, to bypass censorship, to not have to trust anybody.
The US being able to just cut off people from the financial system is seen as very problematic by anyone outside the US.
Unpaywalled alt links:
https://beincrypto.com/iran-bitcoin-toll-hormuz-strait-tanke...
https://news.bitcoin.com/report-iran-charges-crypto-and-yuan...
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/first-two-ships-pass-throug...
Finally, the Real World use case for Bitcoin!
Ransomware payments, speculative trading, now paying off oil pirates!
Iran is a recognized national government, not a pirate.
Oh crud I just opened a can of worms with that, didn't I?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_and_Emperors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQBWGo7pef8
I am afraid that soon, actual sea pirates, e.g. in Central and South America, Africa, etc. will start using naval mines in their regional seas, demanding crypto payment from passing ships.
If it was just to 'hide' payments then they could just use USD and using crypto would just be an improvement in convenience. A bigger reason is that they won't be indirectly attacked with monetary policy and that the acceptance of USD with entities willing to do business with them is probably low right now.
I'm not sure most people have the strength of conviction in their God to stare down the us navy like Iran does.
Do drones need conviction?
The person launching them sure does. This scenario reminds me of the time Russian hackers took over a US pipeline a couple years ago then immediately apologized saying they didn't want to cause a international incident and they would vet their targets better in the future. There are not many people who want that kind of heat. Like the first ayatollah is dead and the second is reportedly in a coma. The Iranian government is willing to pay that price and that's why they won. How many pirate leaders do you think are willing to pay their life so that their third of fourth successors can maybe collect a toll? Or how many are like Venezuela and you can kidnap one guy and the whole house folds.
It doesn't have to be a US Navy ship that they target. They could target anyone else. The mines are intelligent in who they target.
If they're dropping mines then the navy will be the targets eventually.
Things that have never happened with USD. Glad we have a truly clean pure money that is incorruptible unlike bitcoin.
Cryptocurrency has had many legal real world uses cases. It is used heavily in prediction markets. Serving as an inflation-resistant store of value that is orthogonal to gold also is an implicit real world use case. Permissionless and easy international transfer of funds between individuals has been the biggest real world use. It's not only for collecting and trading. Obviously, those wanting to suppress it will keep finding excuses.
Defending crypto as legitimate by adding 'it's also useful for gambling to get around regulation' is wild.
Some bets are less gambling than others. For example, if you bet "no" on the US leaving NATO this year, just how much of a gamble is that? There are many such bets, some a lot less uncertain than this example. Anything can happen in today's environment as yesterday's ceasefire showed, but in aggregate, statistics and commonsense are not lost. The regulation you speak of is oppressive, legally unchallenged, and is considered undesirable by people who appreciate personal freedom.
'It's not gambling. Look at what a sure thing this bet is!'. Again, wild.
The regulation is often at the state level, the most representative form of legislation possible, often varying from state to state creating the freest system/market where you can chose to live in a less or more regulated state.
When at the federal level it is as the DIRECT result of the social impact it previously caused not because the government just wanted to restrict freedom but freedom was tried and in this situation not sustainable on a societal level.
Lol at the downvotes. People get so mad if you say you prefer one imaginary ledger over another.
The same people have no idea what's coming for them even when it's in their face as with the posted news article. If the US doesn't act now to restore the use of USD in Hormuz, it's the beginning of the end of the for the USD as a currency for international trade.
I confess I'm not entirely sure if this is satire or if you are a true believer. Well done!
Should just pay in pure cocaine, cut out the crypto middlemen.
Pretty crazy for countries to demand Bitcoin that has no clear plans for quantum. Not to mention security budget issues.
It’s not like Iran plans to keep the Bitcoin. It’s just a way around sanctions.
Weren’t sanctions lifted last week?
It's safe to assume nothing has actually changed until there's a signed deal. With Trump it's all just talk.
on just oil afaik.
No
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/08/trump-threatens-tariffs-coun...