The BBC headline is correct (as they hired a lot of Vietnamese speaking journalists, some of whom have been targeted for assasination and kidnapping by the Vietnamese govt [0]).
The amount stolen was $44B. She needs to return $27B to not be executed.
[0] - https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/sep/30/bbc-accused-of...
Ah, that's the context I was missing.
>A total of $12.5bn (£10bn) was embezzled, the equivalent of almost 3% of Vietnamese gross domestic product, but prosecutors said on Thursday the total damages caused by the scam now amounted to $27bn.
> My Lan was convicted of taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. The verdict requires her to return $27bn
Quite funny that you forgot to denominate the currency here. As a non-US reader (we actually exist on the Internet!), it wasn't $44B in my currency.
I assume it is US$ ?
You'd tell me to pull my head out of my ass, right?
The location of the news website is irrelevant.
I'm Canadian, I live in Canada, I earn CAD, My whole economic life is in a context of non-US dollars
But if I see $value in an unknown context online I assume it's USD
I think it would be really goofy to assume otherwise
The actual number in VND is hard to reason about, even for the vietnamese locals. When 1 million VND is 40 dollars, that's not helping.
Yes, it is US dollars.
Why should you assume $ refers to USD?
Because the US is the global superpower. Trade and banking reserves overwhelmingly use USD.
No other currency, and certainly none that use the $ symbol, even come remotely close to the USD.
I particularly hate businesses which sell stuff internationally who put $ on their website rather than US$ / AU$ / etc. You can’t assume that just because it is an American company that $ means US$, because some (but far from all) American companies detect the customer is coming from Australia/Canada/whatever and automatically display localised prices. And don’t get me started about the websites that seem to be offering too-good-to-be-true deals on Australian hotels until I realise they are actually showing US dollar prices, but $ instead of US$ makes that non-obvious
To 95% of the world, the relevance and influence of USD isn’t remotely close to their own currency’s. Sure, it’s relevant to some industries and to the larger economy – that makes it like CNY or EUR are to you, nothing more.
I do think a USD assumption is reasonable, but only because the statement was made on HN, which is predominantly American. USD does not own the $ symbol outside of the US.
Of course, a Canadian or Australian, or New Zealander, or Rhodesian, or Zambian, whose local currency also uses the same symbol, will tend to assume their local currency instead. But they are a minority of the world's population.
Especially on a thread specifically talking about currency conversion.
That is not true. For example on foreign exchange markets "Dollars" means USD. If you want AUD it's "ozzie", and if you want CAD it's "Loonie"[1], and NZD is "kiwi".
[1] I don't make the rules - FX markets are weird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loonie
It does merit discussion. This has been demonstrated. The parent shouldn't be downvoted for pointing out the ambiguity to an actual global population that exceeds the United States of America by some margin. It's not about being a "superpower" it's about clarity of communication and eyeballs.
Just like the date 04/10/2024. Is that a few days ago, or in a number of months? Wheras 2024-10-04 makes it explicit (in a sane way that denotes a clear hierarchy of values).
I would consider it ambiguous only if used in a Canadian or Australian context. (Or other country that uses $ for their currency).
Certainly when the local media here reports on how much Donald Trump has to pay they convert from US$ to NZ$