What is your take? What role can cryptocurrencies play in helping Russia sanctions evasion and to what extent can this be?
You can see today that the Western sanction has almost no effect on Russia anymore. The world is evolving and cryptocurrency is the latest development around financial dealings, so all fingers are pointing to it in helping Russia to lessen the effect of the sanction.
After US sanctions were imposed on the Moscow Exchange, it actually turned into an “exchange office”, where the Chinese yuan became the only key currency. According to the Central Bank of Russia, the yuan now accounts for 99.6% of the exchange currency market. The remaining 0.4% comes from “friendly” currencies such as the Belarusian ruble and the Kazakh tenge.
Now the Central Bank calculates official exchange rates thanks to transactions that banks conduct among themselves outside the exchange. The future of the ruble, however, depends little on this. Therefore, now in Russia there is a situation where there is no single market and exchange rate. This will have corresponding consequences for the country’s economy, which is already not in the best condition. This destroys imports, which will cause stores to become empty. Therefore, what is happening with the ruble is quite complicated. If there is no foreign exchange market, then there is no clear mechanism for forming the exchange rate. In fact, it is formed by Central Bank employees in agreement with the Ministry of Finance. Today, the possible range of the ruble to dollar exchange rate is from 50 to 150.
In these circumstances, Russia is feverishly looking for a way out of the current critical situation. The need to find new opportunities to pay for imports and receive revenue from exports forced the Russian authorities to quickly legalize cross-border payments in digital currencies. Such a draft law was submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation back in April 2023, a year later it was changed and reintroduced, and now it has been adopted in the first reading. The law comes into force on September 1. That is, from September it will be possible to create platforms for the use of cryptocurrencies in international payments. Therefore, it was decided to create “experimental legal regimes” for specific projects. They can use digital currencies as currency values, means of payment in foreign trade, and others, and this will be regulated by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.
https://zn.ua/ECONOMICS/v-rossii-naspekh-uzakonili-raschety-v-kriptovaljute-i-razreshili-ikh-majninh.htmlIt is unlikely that all of Russia’s major international trade partners will be interested in accepting cryptocurrency and paying with it. This is especially true in China and India, where cryptocurrency is not treated very well. But the situation in general is very interesting for the cryptocurrency market.