Can Russia use cryptocurrencies to evade Western sanctions? Likely, to some extent, but it’s ‘very hard to do at scale,’ says on
Categories: Crypto News
As the U.S. and its allies aim to cripple Russia through sanctions for invading Ukraine, there has been some speculation around whether Moscow could gain leeway through cryptocurrencies, which are typically based on decentralized networks and don’t rely on any central authorities to maintain.The sanctions target Russia’s central bank, some state-owned companies and elite families, and include measures that remove some Russian banks from SWIFT, a payments-related messaging service based in Belgium that helps banks world-wide execute financial transactions. The ability to move cash through crypto would “definitely be some level of buffering,” Rance Mashek, president and founder of trading platform iVest+ told MarketWatch in an interview. “Unless the Russian companies are on the sanctions list, we can’t see anything that would keep a US-based company from paying a Russian company through crypto to just transact,” Mashek said. However, “it’s very, very hard to do at scale,” said Redbord, who once worked as a senior adviser to the undersecretary for U.S. terrorism and financial intelligence. “The liquidity is just not there,” Redbord said. The war is likely to “require billions of dollars and it is very hard to off ramp billions of dollars of crypto.”“They will find ways to do it. It just can’t be in the huge amounts that would come anywhere near replacing or getting close to replacing what they’re essentially losing with the sanctions that have been imposed,” Redbord said.