Cool, now we can add global extortion to cryptocurrency benefits.
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2026
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it's a fucking toll you dingus those are iranian waters
I heard they are also accepting iTunes gift cards.
Just make sure you don't redeem them
Preferred crypto payment is USDT (Thether) stable coin. Which is the least US regulated, and most popular, US $ equivalent/backed stable coin. They are unlikely to refuse bitcoin, though.
Bitcoin finely found a use case that's not crime. Take that crypto haters.
Purchasing drugs for yourself shouldn't be a crime, so it's awesome that cryptocurrencies exist for this purpose.
Technically it still is a crime since charging money for access to navigable waters is a violation of international law.
Which law?
It's not like international law protected them in the first place.
Honestly, the biggest mistake they've made here is that they're not demanding Monero instead.
Right? I was like dang you're already half way there lol.
The reason though is that they probably don't want to discourage payments because I have seen businesses refuse to use Monero in ransomware attacks because their insurance agreement complicates payout on a fundamentally untraceable currency. Even if Bitcoin is technically decentralized, they can report the transaction and specific currency blocks to whatever federal agency is responsible for fraud.
Still, why not offer both and put a 5% discount on Monero.
I never even considered the insurance side there. But it is legit proof of delivery and it gives them at least a chance of recovery if someone fucks up cleaning them.
It's all about whether Binance lets them cash out or not, but mixing within BRICS is sure to make it clean enough, as Binance getting/keeping sovereign clients is good for Binance, and not worth appeasing US BS to turn it away.
It's easier for people to get Bitcoin, Iran could deal with the cleaning / mixing themselves after. This is already going to create friction so keeping it lower might help?
Oh, if they demanded Monero, people would figure out how to get it.
theres only like 6.5B usd worth of monero (compared to ~1Trilion BTC)
At 20Milion barrels of oil (/ dolars if its $1 a barrel) a day, theyd own all the monero within a year, meaning theyd have told pretty actively be selling it back onto the market for another currency to keep a supply for shippers to use. Compared to BTC where they'd need 136 years of hoarding to accumulate it all
The huge demand spike would increase the value of any coins quite a bit so your napkin math doesn't quite hold. It would basically make monero a new petro backed currency.
Bitcoin is for dodging sanctions and the influence America has over the international banking and payment systems. It's also may shield third parties from sanctions the US may impose on those who transact with Iran.
Reminder that bitcoin is not now nor has it ever been anonymous.
Doesn't need to be it's just irreversible. That's why north korean randsomeware has worked forever.
It wouldn't have anything to do with tracing transactions to North Korea being pointless and unactionable I'm sure.
Neither is a bank account though either. And one is sanction proof, the other isn't.
It also means that if there's a secondary deal trump's Bitcoin account get it's cut right after Iran takes theirs
I'm surprised Elon didn't convince them to take the payments in Dogecoin....
Why would they ever listen to that dumbass, who's involved with the countries attacking them?
It's ok because the binance CEO guy purchased a pardon in helping Iran laundering their BTC
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Did they give up using the yuan?
They're doing both.
People who say that crypto has no application are just thinking inside the imperial bubble.
People have always known that crypto who is very good for crime.
Crime was the first adopting use, but not the last. Even the US recognizes its value by having a strategic reserve.
But there are very good reasons why Bitcoin is very far from mass adoption as an actual currency.
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How could that work? Doesn't it take some time for a bitcoin transaction to get pulled into the chain?
Layer 2 networks like the lightning network operated in the milliseconds time frame.
A couple minutes?
Yeah, and the article says the shippers are given a couple of seconds to pay in bitcoin.
At the size of transactions they'd be doing, it'd probably be worth it to set a high fee so that it gets picked up and processed faster. Should still be peanuts compared to the value of cargo these tankers are carrying
It takes 10 minutes to get a single confirmation, but I'm assuming that it takes more than 10 minutes for a ship to transit this waterway, so it wouldn't matter.
Yeah, but the article says they have seconds to pay with bitcoin.
Something tells me the article doesn't understand the way Bitcoin works. A transaction takes 10 minutes to clear on-chain, unless you're using the lightning network, and the lightning network is fucking terrible, especially for high-value transactions like this. Because you can be rug-pulled. That and you can't send high-value transactions on a lightning network because every link in the chain has to have the proper amount of liquidity to make that transaction occur.
I don't imagine trying to trick Iran out of their money is a particularly good long-term strategy anyway. Nothing unless you're going to turn up in a new ship every time.
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