The impact of the West’s sanctions just seems to be getting worse and worse for Russia.
Now, 98% of Chinese banks — even small regional ones — are refusing to accept direct Chinese payment transfers from Russia, Alexey Razumovsky, the commercial director of the payments company Impaya Rus, told the pro-Kremlin media outlet Izvestia.
Such issues appear to have intensified over the past three weeks, as smaller Chinese financial companies were still processing Russian payments in May and June, Izvestia reported.
Last month, the Russian outlet Kommersant reported that about 80% of bank transfers made in the Chinese yuan were bouncing back with no explanation after being stalled for weeks while banks decided whether they could transact.
Razumovsky told Izvestia the payment challenges with Chinese banks could contribute to supply-chain difficulties and inflation in Russia.
The value of cryptocurrency is usually tied to the price. The price is determined at exchanges. Russia however can’t use foreign exchanges as the accounts there normally require identification (some offer pseudonymous crypto to crypto swaps) as the exchanges don’t accept Russians, and if you want to convert crypto to a currency, you need a bank account calling in that currency, which is not happening. If the exchanges even transferred money to those as they’d lose their license.
The value of cryptocurrency is much less than what you see on CMC etc. if you can’t actually convert it to those currencies. Which is the main issue.
Add to this that most crypto currencies can be traced and having transacted with known Russian problematic accounts - even via proxies - taints your wallet, making it hard to impossible to buy and sell on exchanges later down the line.
The points do make sense. But I mean at that point why not just use the crypto solely for international trade with other parties going the same thing?
Especially using the one that can’t be traced or tied back to any entity (Monero)
At that point it seems it would be trivial to convert into cash but also why would you have to if you could just use it between countries like that.
I mean I know people hatecrypto here but even they have to admit it seems like a better idea than getting no money through at all.
Because for those states and companies, crypto is a toy and not real money. Also not having a bank means your transactions are always final (nobody is putting up with multisig).
Crypto has been great for buying drugs via darknet and taking money from investors for partnerships that don’t exist or make sense. Been using it myself actually. Also facilitates gambling, either via crypto casinos or directly against its price. Outside of that, traditional banking wins.
It’s also questionable whether a state could acquire so much crypto quietly at this point. Most big holders are either very publicly about it, like Argentina, or confiscated it from illegitimate sources (like when Germany raided a darknet market operator).
I suppose they could mine it all themselves. To handle all its international trade, a good sized nation state would need the electrical production of a smaller nation state just for that.
The amount of crypto you can theoretically mine is independent of your hashrate and only dependent on the block reward plus transaction fees… and these are minuscule compared to what a state needs.
In practice, if an actor held even slightly more than 50% hashrate, trading with him would be a major risk. Which means that’s about the upper limit of what you can actually mine.
See this was what I was really wondering. Some cryptp like Dogecoin and Monero have unlimited amounts that can be mined and while certainly not practical in my mind I was 100% thinking why not just mine a fuck ton of Doge or something and have it agreed upon that that is the international trade money.
I do see how converting it into a fiat currency would be problematic though but in that case wouldn’t gold or silver also he able to be utilized?
The goal of a banking system is to move money (possibly a lot) quickly, without physical exchange, for the maximum number of goods and services. States also want to control a currency for their fiscal policy, and they want to be able to go into debt.
Established crypto fails the maximum number, fiscal policy and debt criteria. As soon as you introduce mandatory physical exchange via previous metals, what remains?
And yes; Monero theoretically has an infinite amount of coins. However, it has reached tail emission since about two years, meaning the block reward is 0.6XMR every two minutes, which currently equates to about $65.000 per day. However, mining requires CPUs, which would need to be acquired first.
All in all, the current numbers don’t make it a feasible solution.