Topic: Russia cut off from Swift is fantastic opportunity for bitcoin - page 5. (Read 1248 times)

Currently America and its allies are continuing to try to stop the Russian military action in Ukraine, one of which is by continuing to apply social and economic sanctions to Russia, the decision taken by America in my opinion is the right step so that the Russian economy will weaken slightly later, now America has imposed sanctions on two Russian state-owned banks, namely the State Development Bank Vnesheconombank (VEB) and the Public Joint Stock Company Promsvyazbank (PSB), from the news I read in the Reuters media, VEB is very crucial for Russia to raise funds, while PSB is very important for the Russian defense sector so that this sanction will certainly have a very strong impact on the Russian economy.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/western-sanctions-banks-only-scratch-surface-fortress-russia-2022-02-24/

That's a good thing to stop the war effort but hopefully the sanctions aren't going to affect the citizens of their country because the people in the country are against this war. Good thing that they're removed from Swift which is definitely devastating for them as each time something important is cut off from them, they'll eventually slow down.

Except these's one little big problem.

90% of the stuff you actually need to be able to buy are not available for crypto.

For example - Service registrations, store purchases, gas, utility payments, subscriptions all require cash or card.

Also, because there is no officially recognized way to withdraw bitcoins as RUB banknotes, peoples BTC would be stranded in their wallets.

Remember that BTC is not legal tender in Russia so this makes it at best severely inconvenient, and at worst impossible for the average Russian to buy stuff in Russia.

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This does not even take into account that cutting Russia off of SWIFT doesn't even prevent Russian banks from servicing transactions to/from local merchants, so it is useless as a crippling tactic. Ironically, it would make it harder for Russians to buy and sell crypto with cards and wire transfers.

With the closure of SWIFT access, of course it will make it very difficult for Russia to carry out both trade activities and any international transactions with other countries, due to sanctions and also pressure from other countries on Russia, of course it will have a bad impact on the country economy later, now I think that NATO countries are starting to try to shut down Russia economic activities, and it will automatically make Russia weak like America did by prohibiting Russia from using the dollar as a tool for international, so I think bitcoin and crypto may be the right solution and also a shield to withstand the economic war carried out by NATO countries.

This looks like Russia has planned well and executed the war, if not there is no need for the legalizing of bitcoin prior to the days of war. It seems like Russia have well analysed about the blocks, and now people will use the cryptocurrencies they hold. By the time there arises a question, what will the people do if they don't have cryptocurrencies. This is an opportunity for growth, but this is temporary in my view.

Few countries have taken the neutral stand, which seems like they're in mutual benefitting. Isolation is the only way with which the war severity can be reduced.

Every passing day the sanctions are becoming more strong and powerful,the more we isolate Russia right now the better for Western countries and Europe.Putin I believe now has concluded that this was a bold move and not premeditated like Biden says because if it was I think Putin would have taken measures against sanctions but so far nothing is being done to stop this or to find an alternative to Russian economy.Russia will be bankrupt in no time and that is what they deserve for causing mass blood and destruction together with killing innocent civilians.

The civilized world is quite actively isolating Russia from the outside world for its military aggression against Ukraine. In his speech, Biden said that although Russia will not yet be disconnected from the SWIFT payment system due to the disagreement of some countries, the economic sanctions imposed will cause even more damage than this disconnection. All settlements in dollars, euros, yen, pound sterling are prohibited for Russia, the most powerful sanctions have been imposed on the largest banks in Russia. Soon we will be able to see and evaluate this in practice. In Russia, even bankers no longer know how the banking system will continue to work. There were mostly only exaggerated talks about their payment system, it will take some more time to launch it. By the time it is launched, Russia will already be bankrupt.
Against this background, the two largest banks in China are already significantly limiting settlements and transactions with Russia. They will be produced on a case-by-case basis with the permission of the country's top leadership and only in yuan. Hopes that China would remain Russia's main ally after the sanctions were imposed did not materialize. China also refuses Russian oil due to the uncertainty of financial calculations.
The transition to the use of cryptocurrency will not save the Russian financial system. So it's interesting to see what they'll do next. It is necessary that everyone understand that direct military aggression will be severely punished by the civilized world.

Yes exactly. You may not have buyer and seller against the other countries but bitcoin retains its value at all times because simply it is being valued due to its ongoing transaction in rest of the world.
How beautiful this is.

I am imagining Russia as separated dome right now which is like having its own wall around its continent, no one comes in no one goes out in commercial aspect.

BUT, bitcoin? Oh yeah, the internet forms the best bridge between all of them and it can be easily traded.

They may shut down internet, but bitcoin in the wallet stays as it is! The value remains same because value is from all around the global transaction.

While I agree that this can be a good opportunity for Bitcoin to shine, I guess we also have to see the other side of the coin. Once Bitcoin can be fully utilized by Russia to circumvent the economic embargo and the ban on the use of SWIFT, I am sure that big countries can be looking at Bitcoin not in a good way. Of course, no government can be banning Bitcoin but we know that in reality powerful governments can make it so difficult to deal with Bitcoin if they would be using their state initiative to do something about it. We have seen it in Canada recently where Trudeau and his minions did not look kindly at cryptocurrency because on their eyes it became the tool of their perceived enemies. Anyway, I am hoping for the best so let's see what can be under this circumstances.

I've read that too. They were trying to de-dollarize for quite a while already by using the EUR along with China. This is kind of a way for China to sway other countries to use something else while they also push Yuan (RMB) on some other countries, the Caribbean for example is using Yuan. A lot is happening worldwide not just this Russia and it seems very coordinated. But I think all these are going in the direction of making BTC a legal tender everywhere thanks to sanctions.

hmm. seems some love the Fox news imagery

St peterburg is like london circa 1995 architecture
however
moscow is like london circa now, it even has more population then london
many people think this is how they see moscow

though this is how others see moscow


if your watching news reports where a reporter has deliberately stood in a ancient architectural area, maybe the other story they are telling is that they want viewers to see "russia" as ancient

you know. like those charity aid TV adverts that show shanty towns in ethiopia.
yet if they were to pan the camera around they would see the shanty towns border large city scapes.
this is the ethiopia you will never see on an oxfam/foodaid charity advert


.. much like how countryfree specifically tried to pick st petersburg, rather than moscow for comparison, to make it seem like everything in russia is like st petersburg

im not for russia or asia, but i atleast have an open mind to look beyond the propaganda

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as for picking an outlet for international funds

look into the BIS and their M-bridge. linking russian and chinese CBDC
the BIS is like the brics equivalent to the amero IMF

I understand the logic that without Swift, Russia would get closer to China, but that's the worst thing which could ever happen.

Russia is a dying country, whereas China is a high growth country. You just need to walk in St Petersburg, where everything is old and rotten. You won't see anything new, whereas in Shanghai, there are hundreds of shiny new skyscrappers, new electric buses, all the people have the latest smartphones, there are huge billboard screens everywhere, malls brighter than a Las Vegas casino...

Between China and BTC, Russians would be wiser to choose crypto.

               I absolutely do not think that Russia even considers the option of using bitcoin or any other crypto currency right now since they aren't even on a very desperate situation yet. Mind you, Russia right now still has Italy and Germany which is their traditional customers which have both disagrees with the idea of cutting Russia off from Swift. But even if they do get cut off, they still have china as an option which China would gladly accept. I may be wrong but it's just how I understand the current situation.

It is a bigger opportunity for the Chinese bankers to push their Asian payment system.What is more interesting is the switch to Euros from the dollar. There are 3 major world powers at the moment - Russia, China and the City of London. America and the EU are both puppets of the City of London, so one has to wonder why they are switching to the Euro. I guess they are going to use war to replace the  declining income from pseudo-vaccines, and run up US debt to collapse the dollar.

businesses never pay for goods the same day. they do invoices and credit lines.
if a business cant pay its amount today, they simply find another option tomorrow. such as the chinese CIPS or their CBDC via m-bridge

SWIFT is used for major settlements and transactions between institutions across the globe. Any step to cutoff Russia from SWIFT would mean that none of their companies and people can pay for anything beyond their borders. The question is, does the average Russian directly makes use of SWIFT?

I think the answer would be no. It is mostly businesses and banks that do it with other businesses and other banks.

In order for Bitcoin to be an option, the other party would also have to accept Bitcoin. Just because Russia gets cutoff doesn't mean that the rest of the world will suddenly agree to circumvent the ban by exchanging BTC with them.

in other news.
US and EU are not going to trigger the nuclear SWIFT option. as it would make russia more partnered to china and less reliant on EU/US
the US/EU only works if the US/EU can tie in their enemies into US/EU terms and conditions. but if russia moves over to use china's system, away from the US/EU, then the US/EU can no longer do things.

EG
just turning off swift might make russians touring in america no longer to spend funds in america. but russians on tour, can simply move their russian funds to a chinese system and then get a chinese card delivered to their american hotel and continue spending russian funds in america

meanwhile the US has less power /threat over russia because now russia is not reliant on the russia-US link
the US/EU fear pushing the issue to make russia be more reliant on china and less subservient to US/EU

russia has been involved in de-dolarisation for a while
moving from a 90% stronghold grasp by dollar in 2015 to a 45% in 2020
this control of russia would drop significantly if SWIFT was switched off.

The sanctions are not likely to stop Putin from doing what he wants, but will have a significant impact on the Russian economy. The idea is therefore to force Putin to change his foreign policy, but we know that Europe and the US cannot stop him right now, and the sanctions will weaken the EU's economy as well.

The EU needs to start seriously thinking about their independent policy on Russian gas exports in case Russia decides to cut gas shipments to Europe in the near future. The only way to get off the Russian gas dependence is to develop our own alternative supplies to make the EU independent of Russian gas.

The EU can not do too serious sanctions on Russia because they are still relying too much on energy from Russia. 40% of EU energy is from Russia and we already saw how the energy crisis in the EU last winter.

It's bad for EU because many nations there are in their procedures to reduce carbon emission as well as shut down nuclear power plants. Their green energy increases in the last decade but in the same time, their power supply from nuclear power plants drop even further since the Fukushima Daiichi event.

I believe that Russia and Putin won't escalate their war to any Western nations beyond the Ukraine. They know that if they escalate it inaccurately, they will trigger the World War III and Putin does not want it. He can be a dictator in Russia but can not be the one like that globally.

But they never had any official position on bitcoin to want to change it! There has always been different sides arguing for and against bitcoin and they haven't reached consensus to this day. The thing is that the media only translates and publishes the negative side to spread FUD so you think their position is changed!

US wants to cause energy crisis in Europe and EU can't handle it so they don't want the escalation.