It is common to hear phrases such as "Mr 10 percent" as a reference to powerful leaders in various countries. For instance, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari is called "Mr 10 percent". 10 percent cut from every contract. This is not unique to Pakistan. In India, many regional party leaders (basically, they and their family own the political party) want 20 percent cut.
The corruption elsewhere is of different order. In US, one can bid up four times normal, one at least delivers the quality. Elsewhere, roads fail, buildings fall, bridges collapse, pipes burst upon the first use, ...
1. Perfect roads. Little visible construction despite high traffic: no corruption.
2. Awful roads. Almost no visible construction - medium corruption.
3. Continuous years-long construction. Roads always semi -closed, semi-permanent "work zone". When one construction ends, another immediately starts - extremely high corruption
That's why in Northern California all the roads are constantly under construction, but in Finland they're perfect. I was thinking that in California one needs to get an SUV simply because a sedan's suspension will not last much longer
Or alternately, why should anyone believe that was a one-off event and not the new normal for recent no-bid contracts being awarded by an obviously corrupt administration?
during the nineties there was this joke going around in Spain:
the leaders of Germany, France, and Spain meet to discuss infrastructure...says the German chancelor: see this autobahn? 10% in my pocket...comes the French president and says: this autoroute? 20%...ha!, the Spanish prime minister says, you don't see no autopista here do you?
Is everyone here so afraid of downvotes or out of touch that they don't remember "10% for the big guy" Biden? I know the US doesn't exactly get "Foreign Aid" but our politicians sure do, and it's a broad spectrum problem.
I know nothing about crypto, but wasn't one if its selling points that its "digital gold" for people without stable fiat currencies?
You send aid to a drought-stricken farmer to some sub-saharan region with ample cheap data but no (stable) banks, how...are they supposed to store the money?
I think “autonomous economic actors” is similarly, to quote GP, delulu.
Currency as a tool is inextricable from currency as a representation of interconnected states and state coercive power about what can be done with it. The maximum-autonomy other end of the spectrum leads to feudalism—not equivalent to feudalism but actual feudalism.
Low-currency-autonomy systems like we have can also produce bad outcomes. But sprinting for the other end of the spectrum guarantees them.
Crypto has been sold many many ways, but most of it is not a stable store of value.
Stablecoins are what are supposed to be stable sources of value, but Zeke Faux's book Number Go Up points out how opaque and unaccountable the companies managing these currencies are. From his reporting, their "tractor app" appears to be not so much farmers in sub-saharan Africa receiving aid payments but criminals looking for anonymous ways to transfer lots of money.
Why does literally every single item on Hackernews have some replyguy screaming about clickbait? Is there therapy for that? Do you understand how headlines work? What part of 2 to 6 looks like "not an estimation"?
Edit: HN title used to be "Around 2-6% of World Bank foreign aid got siphoned into crypto wallets"
Original post: While you're being rude and it would be worth cutting the first half of your comment, that's a good point that "2-6%" is still clearly an estimation.
Does the movement of money increase when foreign aid is distributed? If you were to assume the proposition of the proponents of cryptocurrency that it works in a manner similar to money, wouldn't the evidence provided here also support the conclusion that it is working as intended?
If you can imagine a valid world in which a measure is an indicator of a property and also imagine a valid world in which the same measure is an indicator of its inverse, all you have done is proven that the measure cannot be used to determine the truth of the property.
foreign aid is used for both legitimate purposes and all kind's of nefarious purposes.
eg say a foreign rich gvt wants to stoke up civil unrest via NGO / civic organizations - they bring in foreign cash (pallets loads) - then that money goes into the black market destabilizing exchange rages, some of it into crypto as being said, some to bad actors.
It must be noted that not all of the crypto funds are a form of stealing the aid.
Crypto is really handy and useful for actual money management. It's heavily used in Ukraine in the army and shadows the official monetary system.
For example it's close to impossible to use fiat funds to purchase X for the combat units: you'll need a separate department of lawyers just to manage that one procurement documentation. In a war you'd rather not do that.
raincom | 20 days ago
When one hears 2-6%, it is just the floor.
binlog | 20 days ago
raincom | 20 days ago
glimshe | 20 days ago
vinyl7 | 20 days ago
skizm | 20 days ago
boc | 20 days ago
ribosometronome | 20 days ago
boc | 20 days ago
williamtell | 20 days ago
cft | 20 days ago
1. Perfect roads. Little visible construction despite high traffic: no corruption.
2. Awful roads. Almost no visible construction - medium corruption.
3. Continuous years-long construction. Roads always semi -closed, semi-permanent "work zone". When one construction ends, another immediately starts - extremely high corruption
wakawaka28 | 20 days ago
cft | 20 days ago
smitty1e | 20 days ago
Zany stuff.
georgemcbay | 20 days ago
Did you miss the entire Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool disaster?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/climate/reflecting-pool-c...
Or alternately, why should anyone believe that was a one-off event and not the new normal for recent no-bid contracts being awarded by an obviously corrupt administration?
burnt-resistor | 20 days ago
pestatije | 20 days ago
the leaders of Germany, France, and Spain meet to discuss infrastructure...says the German chancelor: see this autobahn? 10% in my pocket...comes the French president and says: this autoroute? 20%...ha!, the Spanish prime minister says, you don't see no autopista here do you?
wakawaka28 | 20 days ago
pj_mukh | 20 days ago
You send aid to a drought-stricken farmer to some sub-saharan region with ample cheap data but no (stable) banks, how...are they supposed to store the money?
satya71 | 20 days ago
cucumber3732842 | 20 days ago
yutter4 | 20 days ago
r721 | 20 days ago
So they fund wages among other things?
rfghy | 20 days ago
mt_ | 20 days ago
boc | 20 days ago
zbentley | 20 days ago
Currency as a tool is inextricable from currency as a representation of interconnected states and state coercive power about what can be done with it. The maximum-autonomy other end of the spectrum leads to feudalism—not equivalent to feudalism but actual feudalism.
Low-currency-autonomy systems like we have can also produce bad outcomes. But sprinting for the other end of the spectrum guarantees them.
rfghy | 20 days ago
phlakaton | 20 days ago
Stablecoins are what are supposed to be stable sources of value, but Zeke Faux's book Number Go Up points out how opaque and unaccountable the companies managing these currencies are. From his reporting, their "tractor app" appears to be not so much farmers in sub-saharan Africa receiving aid payments but criminals looking for anonymous ways to transfer lots of money.
netsharc | 20 days ago
> We estimate an implied leakage ...
So the estimation became almost a fact in the title? What's the equivalent of clickbait in papers?
The rest of that sentence:
> ... of 2 to 6 cents per aid dollar, which amounts to roughly 1.7 to 4.4 billion dollars of aid diversion across the tranche arrivals we study.
BeetleB | 20 days ago
This isn't a clickbait in the paper, but by the submitter.
dfpojsdf | 20 days ago
Dylan16807 | 20 days ago
Original post: While you're being rude and it would be worth cutting the first half of your comment, that's a good point that "2-6%" is still clearly an estimation.
xrd | 20 days ago
https://theleahfiles.substack.com/p/the-currency-killer-part...
Did you know Tether (cryptocurrency company) is in the top 20 USD treasury holders, more than most countries?
And Lutnick is the manager of those funds, or his sons are (silly mistake!) because he divested completely.
Lerc | 20 days ago
If you can imagine a valid world in which a measure is an indicator of a property and also imagine a valid world in which the same measure is an indicator of its inverse, all you have done is proven that the measure cannot be used to determine the truth of the property.
dzonga | 20 days ago
eg say a foreign rich gvt wants to stoke up civil unrest via NGO / civic organizations - they bring in foreign cash (pallets loads) - then that money goes into the black market destabilizing exchange rages, some of it into crypto as being said, some to bad actors.
such is life.
egorfine | 20 days ago
Crypto is really handy and useful for actual money management. It's heavily used in Ukraine in the army and shadows the official monetary system.
For example it's close to impossible to use fiat funds to purchase X for the combat units: you'll need a separate department of lawyers just to manage that one procurement documentation. In a war you'd rather not do that.
Crypto? No problem. Payment sent, X received.
Lots of cases like that.