MasterCard suspends all services in Russia
mastercard.com
mastercard.com
> Visa Suspends All Russia Operations
https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.rele...
MasterCard/Visa cards issued in Russia will not work abroad, cards issued abroad will not work in Russia.
> MasterCard/Visa account for three-quarters of payments in Russia
https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/150023911662537932...
> we have decided to suspend our network services in Russia.
Cards with Mastercard or Visa logo can still work without Mastercard or Visa processing the payments.
Obviously, they do work in ATMs.
For normal payments it is possible for another company to step in and process the payments. That would be massive effort but not impossible to get done in say couple of weeks.
But that would still mean that the system would be cut off from the rest of the world -- cards issued by Russian banks would not be valid outside of the new system. Cards outside of Russia would not work because it cannot communicate with Russian system. And cards issued outside of Russia would not work inside Russia for the same reason -- the transaction would not be possible to authorise across the border.
Per another comment, the massive effort has already happened over the preceding years, out of the expectation that something like this was going to happen sooner or later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30572790
> But that would still mean that the system would be cut off from the rest of the world
Could Russian banks adopt China's UnionPay as an alternative to Visa/MasterCard? UnionPay is already accepted in many Western countries due to the desire to gain the business of Chinese nationals (tourists, business travellers, international students, etc). Would it be technically possible for a Western intermediary processor to distinguish a Russian UnionPay card from a Chinese one?
Lots of them are co-branded with UnionPay.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30572790
They still work within Russia as the network is not run by MasterCard within Russia.
Edit: 25% might be false. Maybe 25% of cards are Mir-only? I'd appreciate if any Russian could chime in to clarify the percentages.
The real issue is that all transactions inside Russia using Visa, MC or Mir are processed inside Russia by the same entity that runs Mir brand, and therefore won't stop working.
It really wouldn't surprise me if the Russian state fully anticipated and expected these financial sanctions from the West, and have positioned themselves to profit from it after some short term pain.
"The suspensions announced on Saturday evening will prevent Mastercards and Visa cards issued by Russian banks from working in other countries and block people with cards issued elsewhere from purchasing goods and services from companies in Russia.
But other transactions may still go through. Cards branded with the Mastercard or Visa logo that were issued by Russian banks may still work inside the country, because the transactions are handled by a local processor, officials at both companies said."
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/05/world/russia-ukraine...
... And, as the cherry on top, ATM withdrawals have been blocked.
Presumably, this will all be figured out over the next week, but it's not great.
Yes. At least Tinkoff bank says so.
I'm more worried about GooglePay.
The only reason I did not bought Huawei last time was NFC+GooglePay.
Besides, Russian banks are already promoting new cards - "Mir + UnionPay", where Union Pay is Chinese alternative to MC and Visa and it should be possible to use new Mir cards everywhere abroad where UnionPay is accepted.
It does feel coordinated. I know corporate law is kind of irrelevant in a context of war, but it feels more than ever like a cartel.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/paypal-shuts-down-its-servi...
But at some point popular demand for war started to rise and the noble houses weren't able to stop it.
We're seeing something similar here.
[1] This can't be the whole story; European history is replete with brother-brother and father-son wars. But I think the idea is worth considering anyway.
This whole thread has been an eye opener for me, I had no idea so many people had so little idea of what 'economic sanctions' means.
Yes, yes it does feel coordinated. Have you noticed it came after sanctions were announced as well??
"As a result of sanction orders, we have blocked multiple financial institutions from the Mastercard payment network. We will continue to work with regulators in the days ahead to abide fully by our compliance obligations as they evolve."
Source: https://www.mastercard.com/news/press/2022/february/masterca...
That's basically a direction that every financial entity which does transactions with Russia must assume that they too should suspend operations, unless explicitly cleared otherwise.
Russia was declared "untouchable", unless you have explicit permission to touch it (like energy markets).
Dealing with Russia is now problematic for top level corporate management and attention of top level management is always a scarce resource. General rule products and customers that require too much of it for the profits generated get the axe.
Russia is about to get a lot poorer. So any business you have with Russia is going to shrink.
Jesus this term really has lost all meaning at this point, hasn't it.
https://twitter.com/ConallLaverty/status/1499414982429224974 Almost none of these companies left because of sanctions, they left voluntary. Companies could still get paid without swift access if they wanted to, that's not the issue. Doing business in Russia has become toxic. It's a race to get out.
It is easy (for me anyway) to see how some people could consider their actions to be in the same vein of their previous attempts to regulate the speech and actions of private individuals they find politically disagreeable. MC and Paypal being the much bigger offenders of that...
You don't need a cartel to coordinate. If someone shoots a gun and everyone ducks, their ducking was coordinated by the gunshot. They didn't need to get together and have a discussion to all duck together at the same time.
So it does nothing then. So russians will be able to use visa/mastercard within russia? They just won't be able to use it outside russia. And foreigners can't travel to russia and use visa/mastercard.
How many russians are going to travel to another country and use visa/mastercard in the near term? How many foreigners are going to travel to russia to use visa/mastercard in the near term? Now compare that to russians using visa/mastercard in russia. I'm guessing that's 99.99% of russians with visa/mastercard.
Just like with SWIFT "ban", it's all for show. The SWIFT ban doesn't affect russian banks tied to oil/gas trade. How convenient.
40%+ internal russian card payments are via their domestic "Mir" system, that is also available in a dozen or so foreign countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(payment_system)
MIR cards are often also co-branded with China's UnionPay, and UP is available everywhere Chinese tourists/business people travel, which is pretty much anywhere relevant enough.
If you want to travel to Russia, you just need to bring with you a UnionPay card, they are just as widely accepted as Visa in Russia, apparently.
I'm not sure what exactly this ban was even supposed to accomplish. Punish Russian citizens, who according to the West, don't even have free elections and therefore had no input whatsoever in this? Seems like an excellent way to win hearts and minds, I'm sure. /s
Key passage:
“ With this action, cards issued by Russian banks will no longer be supported by the Mastercard network. And, any Mastercard issued outside of the country will not work at Russian merchants or ATMs.”
I don’t believe it’s clear that cards issued in Russia are not still being accepted within Russia. Which is what I believe Visa is still doing:
“ all transactions initiated with Visa cards issued in Russia will no longer work outside the country and any Visa cards issued by financial institutions outside of Russia will no longer work within the Russian Federation.”
https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.rele...
If MasterCard is matching Visa it’s effectively cross border transactions that have stopped - not withdraw access to Russian issued cards within Russia.
If they have withdrawn access to Russian cards within Russia it’s going to put enormous pressure on Russian citizens. Visa and Mastercard apparently have 73% of the credit card market in Russia. This could be the type of pressure need for citizens to push back at the Russian administration (not that they aren’t already).
So all local payments will work, but no abroad payments (and no foreign cards to pay locally in Russia). Probably, I will lost most of my cloud data and compute resources incl. VPNs. Fortunately, some providers do accept SWIFT payments.
Meanwhile, for The Real Russians, business as usual.
This looks like theatre hurting the wrong people.
We both know the writing is on the wall and crypto will end up being useless for Russian users.
[0] https://cryptopotato.com/south-korean-crypto-exchanges-block...
If the scope of the OFAC sanctions forces the exchanges to start blocking Russian passport holders and/or residents, that will change, of course.
Kraken CEO tweet thread: http://nitter7bryz3jv7e3uekphigvmoyoem4al3fynerxkj22dmoxoq55...
By the time you found someone and agreed, the price would have dropped 30%.
You might as well use the existing system.
https://events.trmlabs.com/trm-labs/TRM-Talks-Russia-Sanctio...
(They ask you to register to view but viewing is possible without verifying the e-mail)
People at different levels of society are, of course, affected differently, but everybody's affected at this point. Even for an aristocrat, drinking moonshine in Krasnodar just doesn't have the same caché as Don Perignon in Paris.
Stephen Kotkin warned in a recent interview that the russians have their own way they can wreck havoc in our economies, like cutting undersea cables. And I also wonder if at one point the loss of revenues from cutting gas to europe will be worth given the economic impact it will inflict on the west (power cuts/lack of heating all over europe, price of gas sky-rocketting, etc).
At this point I’m wondering whether Russia knows it and wants to impose any sanction except cutting the gas.
On an completely unrelated note I'm sad to observe how corporate speech alters the language. I'm sure it's called "will be rejected" not "will no longer be supported".
I have an ancient smartphone that's "no longer supported" and it still works. I'm sure the message meant that Russian cards won't, but I guess as people got routinely scared to use anything but the vaguest terms it became a habit.
[0] https://mobile.twitter.com/punk6529/status/14944446246304030...
But we are testing modern finance by weaponising the financial system. The most problematic move I think has been freezing the central bank's reserve. It might achieve the short term gain of hurting Russia, but what about the long term impact on the trust in holding foreign currencies?
Simples
They will fight to protect that status. And over the medium to long term, they will reorient their economies so that they are not dependent on autocratic countries.
Autocracy will lose long term.
But wait you say, those are bad people, and I’m a good person, I have nothing to fear! Good luck with that.
Edit: It didn’t take long for a good person with nothing to fear to assure us of his status.
I have never had any expectation that when I am actively committing a crime, I can expect authorities to wait for the courts to decide if I should face any immediate sanctions or controls to stop my behavior.
What would you rather have happen? Rubber bullets and tear gas? Or are you actually suggesting that it is okay to hold the public hostage until you get what you want?
Ghandi and MLK have already given us the answer to that question. It's fine to peacefully protest until you achieve your objectives. Yes, people will try to malign you (saying that you're 'holding the public hostage') and insinuate things about you, but ignore them. It's okay.
It's okay.
And before you say anything about BLM, recall than many thousands of people were arrested last year during those protests, and there were plenty of rubber bullets, tear gas, and beatings.
I'm always amazed at the extent people will go to absolve their own tribe from responsibility while accusing the other side of doing the same thing.
Personally I abhorred the violence in downtown Portland last year and I'm glad they finally stopped. I think the police need to dial it back a little in many cases, but I want them to be able to put a lid on the ability of protesters to destroy the lives of innocent people. And I think January 6 was an insurrection, but of course it was. I find all of y'all kinda annoying :).
>their own tribe
This is the problem in your thinking. These 'tribes' you worry about aren't real. It's an artifact of twitter, of terrible reportage, of lazy journalism and muck-slinging that puts lots of different typs of people in one box because that makes it easy to pick out the craziest of them and and say that they're all like that.
By and large the protesters were/are just normal people who want to be able to get on with their lives and accept the risks they're comfortable with. They spend all their life in their trucks, alone. They interact with maybe 5 people per week, if that, but they're forced to get a vaccination whereas grocery clerks who interact with 5 people every 15 minutes aren't. Most of them already have the vaccination but it's the principle, dammit. And they're sick of journalists and twitterati calling them - and everyone else, for that matter - nazis because a few lunatics showed up to the protest with nazi flags and got kicked out. It's boring that the media keep falling for this shtick. Every single time. You have a group of normalish people with normalish goals and all of a sudden some crazy fucker pops up with a nazi flag. You eject them but then all you hear on the news for the next month is 'nazi truckers...' It's just shit reportage. Utterly shit lazy yellow journalism.
When you finally realise that people just want to be left alone and not slandered and tarred with labels they don't deserve so much of this pointless infighting will go away. But then the media would have nothing to report on.
At least this time the provocateur remembered to iron out the creases on the flag he bought brand new for the occasion. It happens so frequently and so reliably that one can’t help but wonder if the media malfeasance is more than mere laziness. Honest errors are not always biased in one direction.
Of course it is. The modern media is absurdly woke and out of touch with reality and pretty much without principle either.
The trucker convoy was a perfect example of a modern working-class struggle and the media lined up to portray them as anything but.
I remember literally reading in some op-ed words along the lines of 'the truckers are not the working class, they are the modern bourgeoise; they do not work with their hands but merely direct from padded comfort the toil of their mechanical slave.'
It would be funny if it didn't actually affect things.
Due process was still followed even if we don't necessarily like what it was.
It wasn't exactly violent either. Better hope you never have to actually use violence against a corrupt system
It’s troubling, but hardly without precedent. Imagine if they had social media in the 30s-40s.
I have thought about this, and given the amount of pro-Fascist sentiment in Western Europe, WWII probably wouldn't have happened. Germany would probably have gotten away with taking Austria, Czechoslovakia, possibly the lands forfeited to France after WWI and at least part of Poland.
The world would look VERY different to today. Assuming Japan stuck to their neck of the woods, the USA probably would never have gotten to be a super power (given it was WWII that really catapulted them into that category). The UK may still have reasonable parts of the empire. The super powers would probably be Germany, USSR and a lesser extent, UK, Japan.
This is the stuff of alt-historical fiction.
EDIT: apologies for straying off topic but I couldn't resist.
Imagine there's one big bully in a schoolyard playground, alongside the one kid who is singled out. All the other kids (freely) choose to follow the bullies' lead and, at the very best, join in by ostracizing the victim. Who is in the wrong in that scenario?
The best thing Russian people can do is render Putin the king of an empty kingdom, and that was always the solution. Sure, there are hundreds of thousands, to millions and tens of millions of people (depending on where the poverty line is in Russia) for who that isn't an option. Equally so, those people wouldn't have been able to lift Putin's empire into what it is today. There would rather be no expertise for nukes, nobody to architect oil pipelines, and a terribly demoralized and disloyal army. Russia is has aspects of a developed country because of the fantastic people that live there.
Stop paying taxes to dictators, narcissists, and megalomaniacs.
We should widely open borders to Russian refugees and defectors. Patriotism is the love of a country, not a dictator.
There are very few gray areas about what they are doing in Ukraine, so everyone is firing with everything they've got. Weapons of Mass Financial Destruction someone called them.
Usually sanctions are a bit of this and bit of that, just enough to put pressure on the politicians. Now we have companies left and right refusing to do business with Russia, all their foreign money is frozen and billionaires are getting their yachts taken from them. They can't even sell their oil anywhere, not even at a discount. (Although it seems Shell bought some, let's see how the fallout from that decision turns out).
The same would be true of China invading Taiwan.
None other than the hypocrisy of the US and the global standards it has set will be the cause of a global conflict. They just have to keep their forces in check, while an opponent does what they have been doing for decades on a non NATO country. Objectively speaking, THAT is the best decision for world peace. And it's all on the US alone. They can do it, and no one is forcing them otherwise.
When you typed this out, did it not occur to you that this feels this way to you due to a self-imposed bubble?
But now we have actual footage of Russia arresting people protesting against the war, just shooting artillery salvos at hospitals and schools. Oh, and FIRING AT A FUCKING NUCLEAR POWER PLANT. You don't get much more cartoon bad guy than that.
It's a shame that the regular Russian people have to suffer, but the only way to get tiny-P off the throne is to turn the country against him and make stuff so unbearable that even the official news can't explain it away with "russophobia".
I think you can assume that it does occur to most of us that we are all in a bubble to some extent, and that it’s important to be aware of that when forming your own views. It’s also totally possible for someone to come to a firm conclusion about the morality of a particular act without it having to be the effect of a bubble.
It’s easy to picture someone reasonably aware of the context of the invasion, including the restriction of water supplies to Crimea, NATO expansion, the background to the separatist conflicts, Euromaidan, the Azov Battalion, and all the other bits and pieces that we’ve all seen countless articles about over the past two weeks. It doesn’t seem invalid for that person to have a reasonably well-informed view that the actions of Russia are Very Extremely Bad Indeed and that there are “few gray areas”, does it?
I am absolutely sure that Transferwise is still available for Russians to use, so the freedom to transact isn't really lost. 'Cryptocurrencies' should not be used at all.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/payments-company-wise-sus...
You do realise that Transferwise isn’t the only money transfer service, there only given as an example.
The fact that the article states that there was a limit shows this ‘ban’ is only a temporary measure by Wise.
As I said you can still use other regulated alternatives.
What aspect of 'sanctions' do you not understand?
Edit: Oh, I read your other contributions in this thread and see you're just trolling. My mistake.
A source from you would be great rather than dismissing my claim with ‘sanctions’.
You need to elaborate.
Much like you sourced your claim that transferwise worked? No thanks, I'll save my time.
Why not? Are you allergic to them or something? Why can't someone transfer money using crypto if it benefits them to do so?
Try sending me money using a coin that is regulated, not volatile and rife with scams and does not contribute to burning up the planet.
You mean stablecoins like USDC and Tether? I am assuming you sure you are very much informed on those coins are not scams and are regulated right?
How is it easy? Does your country's dictator regularly invade neighbors without so much as pretext and targets civilians?
The key is that they tend to not invade European neighbours. So, yes, if you upset Europe, and all your transactions rely on European cooperation, you may no longer be able to transact.
In fact, if you upset Europe enough, and are not a nuclear state, you might even get invaded as a result. Your concerns about international financial transactions will be a bit academic at that point.
If anything, this episode should make you more confident about transactions just working. The point at which they stop working is 'We've done everything we could against you, short of declaring war.'
Wouldn't it be just easier to fix our institutions so that we can trust and rely on them?
The crypto economy for example is full of sharks. It's a bigger, insider, scammer dog eats smaller, outsider, bagholder dog world and there is no fixing it. It's a zero sum game. It's unsustainable. It's inhumane. It's too simple to hold up any practical economy at scale.
Now it's pretty clear how crypto can have a use case (as some of us already knew and were hammering on about it for a long time).
So can we set a new baseline here, and agree that crypto has a use-case? Or are you anti-crypto people still as short sighted as before?
I think we made some progress here on HN, and some of the "anti-crypto" people are now moving into "not pro crypto" space.
Evading sanctions is just another type of illegal trade.
See, every use-case can be easily taken down.
If I was in Russia, I would be very glad to own some crypto right now. But hey, you do you.
I get why it’s done but it’s still sad to see people that have nothing to do with this situation get hit like this
And just to be clear - I'm not saying it's true or false (heck, I have very mixed feelings), I'm saying it's arguable.
The sad truth is that Russians cannot escape their shared responsibility.
That's like saying no American can escape their shared responsibility for Iraq, or Syria, or Trump. Doesn't matter how they voted, right. People vote in Russia too. Americans could have stormed the White House if they disagreed with the outcomes, or blockaded the city streets with trucks or something .... oh, wait.
The country represents all of you, and all of you represent the country.
So, in Russia all the cards will work, nothing is changed here (despite the statements of Visa and Mastercard). Cards issued by Russian banks would stop work abroad. The same is true for any foreign cards in Russia. So, foreigners in Russia are fucked. People who left Russia in a hurry because they didn't want to be part of this craziness or because it's dangerous for them to stay (i.e. they are known protesters against the regime) are fucked.
Nice move. Simply genius.
ALWAYS carry and travel with cash, no matter what.
ALWAYS keep enough cash hidden in your home to cover a month or more of expenses.
Funny, that's the exact opposite of the advice I hear to only travel with only petty-cash and rely on cards instead, so if you're mugged/robbed or simply misplace your wallet you won't be SOL far from home.
How one should pay for VPN or VPS, for example
I do not deny the possibility of revolution of any form, but there is tons of things one fears worse than death, even a violent one. I really hope you guys get the chances to do the right thing under these circumstances. The wall between daily norm and hell is thinner than a piece of paper.
Why can't they? In free and democratic USA 5% of the population is incarcerated.
Data from the US Department of Justice for 2019: https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/docu...
> By the end of 2019, the incarceration rate had dropped to the same rate as 1995 (810 per 100,000 adult U.S. residents).
Which is about 1 in 123.
> About 1 in 40 adult U.S. residents (2.5%) were under some form of correctional supervision at the end of 2019. This represented a drop from 1 in 32 (3.1%) a decade earlier.
The above includes people on probation or parole.
The writing about authoritarianism has already been on the wall by 2010. The anti-ukranian fascism turned out to be a surprise though.
When you see those Russian protesters, they are all so compliant it blows my mind.
Throw rocks and get the fuck out. It ain't a crime if you don't get caught.
People throw stuff in riots where they have somehow figured out that the police won't open fire, or intentionally shot a rubber bullet in a way so that it'll do permanent damage (e.g. aiming the eyes), or use water canon with the intention of permanent damage (e.g. aiming at head & neck). If a crowd appear to be calm and compliant, or if people are enraged but can't bring themselves onto the street to protest - that is because of fear and really nothing else.
Protesting and rioting is absolutely different under dictatorships. It might be a right or a minor misdemeanor in the western world. I can assure you that it is a crime, worse than felony because this enters the lawless realm, in a lot of places.
Or go fight for Ukraine (they accept anyone).
Ukrainians can also end a lot of suffering by just agreeing with what Russia is requesting. It seems they decided not to.
You misread my comment: I said that you want to save the impact on normal Russian and keep feeding the war economy. I suggest to stop feeding them money for their army, and the consequences on the common Russian is something that can't be avoided.
After first sanctions due to Crimean & Donbass conflict started rolling out in 2014, Russian gvt saw the writing on the wall and gradually strong-armed Visa & MC to move all the local transaction processing to НСПК (National System for Payment Cards).
Here's some more info on this (you can use Google Translate):
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%BE...
Sanctions have nothing to do beliefs about the presence or support for democracy.
> Thus they think that actions like this will cause popular discontent with Putin.
No, the West believes that the sanctions limit the productive capacity of the Russian economy, and thereby Putin’s capacity to maintain and expand the war, constraining his practical options
(They also think that targeted sanctions on oligarchs put pressure on their support of the regime, which may alter Putin’s choices and prospects, but that even more clearly has nothing to do with democracy.)
I'm not against inconveniences per se. But this just doesn't really make sense. It's an inconvenience for a small minority of Russians outside the country and foreigners inside. But I don't understand what the main objective that was achieved here (except the beautiful press release).
I'd understand if they blocked all Russian cards, but it's technically impossible, and this measure looks like a PR move without any real meaning behind it.
It doesn't achieve that. Their economy is only cut off from the west. China, for example, still is find to trade with them. The west is still buying their oil too.
Ultimately the legitimacy of these sanctions come down to how effective they will be in influencing a favorable outcome - ie. pressuring Putin to end the war. Unfortunately Russia is not a democracy - it's a country where you get arrested for protesting, and practically a dictatorship where Putin has been running the country for the last 20+ years. Thus I'm not sure how effective these blanket sanctions will be in changing things, and Putin has so far showed no signs of backing down. But I sure hope I'm wrong. This invasion is completely unjustified, and Putin must be stopped (without escalating to WWIII).
Unless you're Russian I guess.
As much as I enjoy the act this could backfire as a show of the tremendous power these companies have: shutting down credit card payments will likely impact large portions of online payments.
But at the same time every extra inefficiency in the Russian economy could translate into less bullets going to kill Ukrainians
I can't think of a way to reply to this without being trite or insulting, but genuinely, what do you think is the point of a sanction?
But the, maybe obvious to you not to me, consequence is that this could shutdown the entire online marketplace in Russia (at least in the short term)
Also I'm not sure I'd call it a sanction since it's coming from a private company, not a government.
If I were any country right now I'd also take it as a warning to not depend on Mastercard or Visa given the immense power they hold
I'm not sure that many people realise what economic sanctions mean, as I replied to someone else on this thread:
"As a result of sanction orders, we have blocked multiple financial institutions from the Mastercard payment network. We will continue to work with regulators in the days ahead to abide fully by our compliance obligations as they evolve."
Source: https://www.mastercard.com/news/press/2022/february/masterca...
But I'm amazed, why do you think a company would leave money on the table?? PR? Virtue signaling? Really??
It's following sanctions, which blacklist all big Russian banks and remove them from international banking and financing arrangements. Even if Visa/MasterCard aren't explicitly prohibited from dealing in Russia, how are they supposed to move money around with the sanctions in place? It's because of the sanctions.
> If I were any country right now I'd also take it as a warning to not depend on Mastercard or Visa given the immense power they hold
They can try not invading other countries, that seems to do the trick. Joking aside, countries like France have their own independent networks ( Carte Bleue in France) over which payments pass in some scenarios ( honestly couldn't tell, but for instance there are weird cards from some banks that only work on the CB network and don't outside of France, even if they're supposedly Visa/MC).
they're not.
they do what they're told.
Even swift works with any other russian bank.
Maybe they were forced. In any case, it really sucks.
That's one way to shoot your own foot Visa/MC.
I, for one, welcome this, less dependence on Visa/MC, the better.
I suppose I'm trying to say - the payment providers see where the cash is going, but not what you are getting in return. Without that visibility it's hard to more selectively ban transactions.
Russia isn't a democracy. Ordinary people can't oust Putin because the rest of the world makes their lives difficult. This doesn't fix the problem.
Punishing his existing subjects because he's invading another country to acquire more subjects is despicable.
And yet your argument is that, in an adjacent territory he already controls, the citizens should somehow be more successful at removing him?
In what possible way??
Either he is not a dictator and the people of Ukraine shouldn't worry because they'll just be able to "get rid of him" anyway, or he is a dictator and blaming Russian civilians for being under his dictatorial control is victim-blaming.
This doesn't work both ways.
It's European and American money that supports war crimes.
Moreover, many people are in a grey area of the economy, paying no taxes at all: for example software developers making software for the West.
Looking at the ridiculous "sanctions" of recent days, I cannot say who they are directed against. In long run, they benefit Russia, preventing leaking of brains and capital.
The biggest mistake Putin made is that he was under impression that Russia can survive alone and isolated. That might be possible in 60s but not any more.
World: No we don't.
Russia: Don't lie, you hate me!
World: Again, no.
Russia: punches world in the face
World: We hate you.
Russia: See, I told you!
Even if he pulls out of Ukraine tomorrow he will have succeeded in destroying any chance Russia ever had of joining the West, which I’m becoming convinced has always been a key aim of this enterprise.
But he can blame the West for all of it now and roll Russia back to being a complete autocracy where citizens have no rights or freedoms at all because Ukraine.
This logic led to embracing China in the hope that it will make them grow more liberal and democratic. Instead it led to US media/sports/gaming industry/etc kowtowing to China and apologizing to them in Mandarin.
The only solution is to contain the totalitarian world.
> Even if he pulls out of Ukraine tomorrow he will have succeeded in destroying any chance Russia ever had of joining the West
This is Russia's doing. We are only reacting. It's beyond ridiculous to blame the west when Putin is invading a free country and threatening us with nukes.
So, for example, previously locals employed by companies that valiantly declared their condemnation of Putin by shutting down their Russian offices had three choices: work for a company that does support Putin, leave, or starve. Now it’s just work for a Putin supporter or starve.
(Not entirely true because at least some of those companies put their employees on paid leave for now, but that’s still probably what it will ultimately boil down to in the relatively near future. Passenger planes being arrested in foreign airports because of sudden lease termination make for a similar one-two punch combo together with Putin’s closure of the land border in 2020: it’s getting very hard—and expensive—to physically leave even if you don’t want anything to do with this [15-year jail sentence] and never did.)
Good job..?
Trains are somewhat better, I guess: the Allegro train between Saint Petersburg and Helsinki is open for Russian/Finnish citizens only, but does not require special travel reason.
If I were more of a conspiracy type, I'd say they and Putin are on the same side now.
Is MasterCard is bombing civilians?
There's no guarantee that what replaces Putin is going to be more Western and not reactionary. For every Russian that is cosmopolitan and globalist, there's a dozen Russians in small villages that are True Believers and will see this foreign pressure for what it is: replacing a Russian president that, at least in their mind, they put there.
Even if you assume that it's going to be a democratic and Western government that rises from the ashes, I think the timescale for this is in years, not months, and I think that the impact on the average citizen in The West is going to be massive while we wait that out.
I paid north of $80 last night for 18 gallons of fuel, and it's only going to get worse. In Europe, they're staring down the barrel of a significant energy crisis next winter. Energy is everything: it's fertilizer and it's heat. And this is all on the tail of record inflation and a shaky economy.
Hot take: I think this is going to backfire and we're going to see destabilization in Europe and America before Putin is ousted. War tends to be a boon for the economy in the West, but I see good reason why this time could be different.
Who is assuming that's what is going to happen?
If you start running new propaganda - they will start believing it.
And you don't need a western-oriented government in russia. All that is needed is to remove one psycho, after that things will mostly go back to normal after russia compensates all damages and returns all territories.
There's a reason we tolerated the Saudi bombing Yemen.
That's probable, but it's not "backfiring". It's a risk taken in order to stand up to a war criminal. He got away with it lightly last times ( Georgia, Crimea), a line had to be drawn, finally, or he'd simply never stop. Most Europeans are aware of the risks, and many support taking them now, because a line was crossed ( the donation drives, manifestations of support, rearmament plans, polls, etc. - it seems most Europeans support Ukraine and want their governments to act on that). If anything, i think this will bring Europe together, finally end up creating better military cooperation and coordination.
And it's always a game. Europe is staring down the barrel of an energy crisis, but Russia is staring down the barrel of economic ruin. Let's see how stable Putin's regime is with lack of everything bar basic foodstuffs ( furniture, electronics, vehicles, internet).
I think it's remarkable how little the markets reacted to this momentous event. Maybe it's not going to be as bad as rumored?
Russia has been caught out by these sanctions, but China looks to have prepared very well with much of its own sovereign digital and financial infrastructure.
This might not topple Putin, but it would bankrupt Russia in the next 3 months.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30512981
Please try use Paypal with a VPN or in another country, Moneygram, Western Union or use cash, better yet use Transferwise (Wise) or buy gift cards to get your money out.
[0] https://decrypt.co/40284/us-homeland-security-can-now-track-...
The 51% “attack” he is referring to is that a mining pool briefly had over 50% of the total hash rate. No attack took place, and within hours miners had moved to other pools bringing the hash rate of the 51% pool down to the mid-30s%. I’ll also mention that the power of 51% attacks is largely overstated too, especially in a privacy coin like Monero.
Even a reportedly private ‘cryptocurrency’ called ‘Grin’ had an attack which rendered the coin useless.
The only usecase of privacy coins is for illegitimate purposes only.
Also: I think you mean ‘CipherTrace‘, ‘CypherTrace’ does not exist.
Excellent trolling. I have used monero for effectively anonymous online donations to legitimate non-profit institutions. Can you think of any other great alternatives for this online? You know it's not illegal to anonymously donate to someone, yes? Most of the non-privacy coins are much more susceptible to finding a KYC exposed starting point to find where the transaction comes from.
>f there weren’t any issues why are they not being accepted by more exchanges?
Kraken, one of the biggest and longest running KYC and AML compliant exchanges trades Monero in the US. Other exchanges may have simply made a business decision not to trade Monero, but there's clearly precedent that it can be done successfully at least in the US.
Either way the so called privacy coins are not regulated and will soon be delisted from lots of exchanges, there is no use for them if the exchanges are removing Monero and coins like them.
> I have used monero for effectively anonymous online donations to legitimate non-profit institutions.
Just tick ‘give anonymously’.
It’s faster and compliant with laws, rather than using an unregulated and soon to be banned volatile crypto token used by criminals and speculators.
Isn't there still some way to trace the transaction this way? Usually through your bank, credit card provider, or something of that sort. With Monero there is basically no chance of anyone finding out I made the donation. I'm not interested in anyone knowing, including my bank. I like my privacy.
If there's some non crypto way to truly make an anonymous online transaction, I may be interested. Even with a prepaid gift card they can pull up the camera and possibly find me.
>Are you very sure it was a business decision for Kraken to delist Monero in the UK?
This is simply a legal decision in UK to flush Monero from KYC/AML compliant exchange to more anonymous exchange. All UK did was make it harder to find Monero users, with no impact on ability of someone in UK to trade it.
The ramps that allow these purchases to happen will be closed once tight regulation comes in and tanks the prices rendering the tokens useless.
> I'm not interested in anyone knowing, including my bank. I like my privacy.
What is the point when you need to buy the crypto tokens using a card? Even then I am sure Kraken and other exchanges have a log of what coins your purchased and they already know you through KYC anyway.
So it seems that privacy coins were a sly facade to get you give up information (card, kyc exchange, etc)
And when this happens, how do Monero users cash out? By meeting in a dark alley trading worthless coins?
Already knows what? The exchange knows how much crypto I buy from that exchange, but with Monero they don't know anything beyond the first address it is sent to. There is no evidence they're able to find anything beyond that, including where I donate to.
>The ramps that allow these purchases to happen will be closed once tight regulation comes in and tanks the prices rendering the tokens useless.
As long as there is a ramp for you to obtain a pair that trades for your privacy coin, and reverse direction, there's little to no impediment to trading your privacy coin. In UK I would just buy litecoin or something, then trade it for XMR. If I wanted to cash out I would trade XMR for something else (goods, cash in another country, or another crypto that trades in my country).
>What is the point when you need to buy the crypto tokens using a card? Even then I am sure Kraken and other exchanges have a log of what coins your purchased and they already know you through KYC anyway.
Kraken knows how much XMR I buy and sell through them. Unlike with say BTC they have no idea where it goes after that. I know my bank knows I have money, so they aren't really getting any more useful information by looking at my purchases of XMR. If I donated with a card, my bank would see where that money actually went.
>And when this happens, how do Monero users cash out? By meeting in a dark alley trading worthless coins?
Explained earlier, Monero(XMR) can be cashed out by trading for something tradeable in your own country. Note Monero isn't illegal in the UK, there's nothing stopping someone in UK from owning Monero and buy goods or cash from out of the country or exchanging it for another coin.
> By meeting in a dark alley trading worthless coins?
The idea of it being worthless is certainly possible but at this point not reflective of reality.
-----------------
>Again, your will for this so called ‘privacy’ and all this hassle at the expense of the environment due to excessive Proof of Work (or Waste)
Can you quantify how much energy is acceptable to use when making a donation transaction to charity? If I were to drive to a charity and donate cash to Ukrainian refugees for example, would it be a sin to you?
>It is the privacy coins that will be banned first when regulations arrive.
But they aren't now, so I don't think you can say my charity donations are illegal, nor a 'terrorist' act.
>Monero has gotten even closer to zero from the start of this year and the trend is going down.
You can pick whatever arbitrary timeline you want. On a 5Y timeline Monero is down, on a 1Y timeline it is up. My transaction (from converting to fiat, to sending) usually take <1hr so the only timescale I'm interested in is some stability over an hour or so. 1Y is way too far for me personally to even care, but if your transactions take 1Y to clear or you use Monero as a long-term store of value that may be important to you.
>So yes, it is getting worthless as a currency buy useful for people betting and gambling on the price.
OK but that's not the only use case, you can do other things than gamble.
>Thanks for playing.
Monero has worked fine for my legitimate uses. It's fine if you haven't found them. 'Playing' has been an imperfect but effective experience for many.
I’m sure you’re glad that you would prefer to burn the planet up with using Monero for some false sense of privacy knowing that the overwhelming majority that use it are criminals and terrorists.
Unfortunately this makes your anecdote not only irrelevant, but highly likely that Monero would be made illegal very quickly in the US, UK and other places.
It is the privacy coins that will be banned first when regulations arrive.
> The idea of it being worthless is certainly possible but at this point not reflective of reality.
Monero has gotten even closer to zero from the start of this year and the trend is going down.
So yes, it is getting worthless as a currency but useful for people betting and gambling on the price.
Thanks for playing.
But if you're holding crypto today, what's the motivation to exit and assume a large ruble position?
But crypto is not immune from censorship, just from centralized censorship. If bitcoin was widespread now, users would block addresses or wholesale fork the chain to oust russia
Crypto is always used for speculation and nothing else and it cannot be used as a 'currency'. The slow speeds, the high gas fees, scams and rampant rugpulls and hacks make this an unregulated wild west that even the crypto exchanges have blocked Russian users (so much for no censorship) [0] so it is all broken to begin with.
'Cryptocurrenies' are not currencies and they should be called for what they really are: monopoly money tokens.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/crypto-exchange-bin...
Crypto exchanges have not blocked russian users. the blocked cards are in accordance with laws.
call it what you want, it's not like other kinds of money are ideal 'currencies'. All of them are tools, if they work they re good
I don’t think you would want to wait for hours for a payment to settle only for it to fail later because of the gas fees.
> Crypto exchanges have not blocked russian users.
Yes they have and they can.
> call it what you want, it's not like other kinds of money are ideal 'currencies'.
It isn’t money if it is loses 60% of its value in a couple of hours with additional fees I didn’t agree to.
It’s a distributed casino that only speculators use, and it would certainly won’t be useful when it all comes crashing down.
Like the ruble? Anyway, are you aware of stablecoins?
Your keys, your coins. Their keys, their coins.
Anyone who is paying attention, globally, is now realizing that they need to begin moving at least some assets into cryptocurrencies, in their own, personal accounts.
The problem is: BIP-39 is a train-wreck, from any practical security and reliability perspective. Basically, any "normal" person setting up a Crypto account w/ BIP-39 seed recovery is just gonna lose their money. I estimate 10% a year probability of total account loss: probably greater.
Use SLIP-39: https://slip39.kundert.ca/macos. Set up an account. Fund it. Get this done.
Because: you're next...
Check john mearsheimer for an understanding how putin thinks
Once ukraine is in nato russia has no leverage over what kind of arms are deployed there for instance.
Did you hear about the Carribean crisis?
I've had enough of Russian propaganda.
> because he's not expanding russia. hes not letting ukraine to join nato.
Previously you were all saying we're hysterical and there will be no invasion. Russia has the same MO as cancer: expand as much as possible. It's well known that it wants access to our (Romania's) mountains. He's not going to stop at Ukraine. Putin has already revealed that we want's the Republic of Moldova.
Who "we? US intelligence knew about the build-up and Putin has allegedly suggested the possibility to Biden ad well.
> I've had enough of Russian propaganda.
How is US professor a russian propaganda? He was saying in 2015 that it's not a good idea for nato to meddle in Ukraine and that would lead to invasion. No one heard.
> It's well known that it wants access to our (Romania's) mountains.
Well known by whom? Maybe by Romanians but definitely not Russians because it's the first time I hear that.
> Putin has already revealed that we want's the Republic of Moldova.
Source?