According to Jake Chervinsky of the blockchain association says that politicians don’t have to worry that Russia will use crypto to circumvent economic sanctions. Such activity is not feasible because the scale of activity is too high to be supported by existing technology. Experts say that such fears are baseless as the crypto market is fairly small. It will not be able to support the transaction volume required by Russia to meet its needs. Also, Russia’s infrastructure related to digital infrastructure is very small.
Some high-profile figures who expressed issues with Russian crypto use included Hillary Clinton, ex-US Secretary of State and Christine Legarde, President of the European Central Bank. Their concern was that crypto would provide a way for Russia to bypass severe sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine.
Russian access to SWIFT has been cut off and businesses in the West have been prohibited from transacting with Russian banks. According to Chervinsky, Russia cannot use crypto because sanctions cover US and other currencies. The second reason is that Russia’s financial needs are much larger than what the crypto markets can handle. The third most important reason is that Russia has been working on not getting sanctions. Besides that, it hasn’t worked hard enough to build the right infrastructure to build crypto platforms. It doesn’t have crypto-related regulations in place.
Given all the above reasons, Russia cannot use crypto to get enough funds to run the country. Billions of dollars in Russian funds are now inaccessible because of the sanctions.
