this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2026
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How could that work? Doesn't it take some time for a bitcoin transaction to get pulled into the chain?
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.
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.
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.
The ships can wait, I guess.
A couple minutes?
Yeah, and the article says the shippers are given a couple of seconds to pay in bitcoin.
I mean, all the steps leading up to that take way more than a few seconds, including...getting the email. This seems like someone misspeaking or not understanding what's going on...
Layer 2 networks like the lightning network operated in the milliseconds time frame.
Doesn't that require trust in the provider hosting the off chain transactions? And lightning transactions can get preempted by conflicting moves from a wallet, and invalidated? I'm no expert, but it seems like these big regular transactions would be targets for abuse.
Yes, as far as I understand it. No you create a mutisignature wallet first that holds the funds that can be moved around the layer 2 network.
On chain makes more sense for this application to me too