Russian-American ballerina Ksenia Karelina has pleaded guilty to treason charges after she was arrested for donating money to a charity supporting Ukraine.
Russian prosecutors are seeking a 15-year sentence after the security services accused Ms Karelina of collecting money that was used to purchase tactical supplies for the Ukrainian army.
She was detained by authorities in Yekaterinburg, about 1,600km (1,000 miles) east of Moscow after a family visit in February.
The sentence comes one week after Russia and the West carried out the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War, where 24 people jailed in seven different countries were exchanged.
Ms Karelina’s lawyer said the prosecutors’ request for a 15-year sentence in a penal colony was too severe as the defendant had cooperated with the investigation.
Mikhail Mushailov also said it was “impossible” for Ms Karelina to have been included in the recent prisoner exchange, because an exchange can only happen once the court verdict comes into force.
When people ask why we need digital money with high privacy guarantees, this is why.
Taler, credit cards, money transfers… all allow have the structure to allow this to happen.
I’d consider any of the current cryptocurrencies to be overall failures. They’re a way for tech-bros to piss away money on “investments” and for Chinese-owned mining firms to make a profit at the expense of the environment.
I agree that an anonymous digital currency is a fantastic idea, but how do you keep it from just turning into another Bitcoin?
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/cryptocurrency/
We focus on the attributes of possible solutions, and use it for transactions.
The page you linked talks about privacy, but it makes no mention of abuse by investors or the environmental impact of miners.
Nobody will deny that cryptocurrency is good for privacy, but that doesn’t negate all of its damaging aspects.
FUD regarding Taler. This kind of thing is exactly what could not be traced with a Taler based payment.
Remember the threat in this scenario is the authoritarian government with full banking authority to legally inspect all transactions, as well as token timings.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding how Taler works. Yes KYC exists for it, but the exchange can only know that you exchanged money for Taler token, not what you spend them on. And on a cross-border payment like this the government doesn’t have “full banking authority” either.
