Crypto Capture of Foreign Aid

83 points by bko 3 hours ago on hackernews | 28 comments

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.

When one hears 2-6%, it is just the floor.

binlog | 2 hours ago

Don’t need to look that far. The person in the White House is doing the same thing.

raincom | an hour ago

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, ...

glimshe | an hour ago

If they are built at all.

vinyl7 | an hour ago

When was the last time the US built anything at all?

skizm | an hour ago

We did just break ground on the new tunnel from NJ to NYC for trains. We'll see how that plays out in the next 1-2 decades.

boc | an hour ago

The US manufactures more goods annually than Germany, Japan, and S. Korea combined.

ribosometronome | 27 minutes ago

Isn't its population also larger than all three combined? It seems like some per capita measurement might be more telling here.

: boc | 14 minutes ago
If you go that route, then the US is ahead of China for manufacturing output per capita. Which probably isn't what you wanted to hear.

williamtell | an hour ago

That's quite optimistic. How many months of further development does a deal usually need to have something sizeable that can collapse?

cft | 32 minutes ago

I developed a three-tier corruption test in US:

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

pestatije | an hour ago

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?

wakawaka28 | 20 minutes ago

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.

pj_mukh | 2 hours ago

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?

satya71 | 2 hours ago

World Bank doesn’t typically give money to people. They fund development projects.

: cucumber3732842 | an hour ago
This. All the perverted incentives and money wasting inefficiency of federal grant funded local projects but for poor brown people half a world away.
: r721 | an hour ago
>They fund development projects.
So they fund wages among other things?

rfghy | 2 hours ago

Crypto was DoA as the architect had a delulu view of humanity.

mt_ | an hour ago

So the best realistic alternative is what, AWS IAM for autonomous economic actors?

: boc | an hour ago
May I present to you the humble briefcase full of cash?

phlakaton | an hour ago

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.

netsharc | 2 hours ago

From this exact blurb:

> 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 | an hour ago

This submission is not following HN news for submission titles.

This isn't a clickbait in the paper, but by the submitter.

dfpojsdf | an hour ago

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"?

Dylan16807 | an hour ago

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.

: dfpojsdf | 41 minutes ago
Would it be worth it? Why? To placate Hackernews replyguys? Fuck off.

xrd | an hour ago

This is relevant:

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 | an hour ago

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.