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.
Why would they not just use cryptpcurrency at this point?
Like, there is a solution right there. I don’t support either of their governments btw but I mean come on, the answer is right there
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).
Bitcoin has a marked capitalization of about 30 billion USD. A S-400 air defense system costs 1.2 billion USD. So you could trade 25 of those systems using the entire “supply” of bitcoin. Russia calimed to have about 450 of these systems before the war. Even if they would use bitcoin for trading military equipment, cryptocurrency simply does not have the volume to pay for a meaningful amount of equipment.
Why would they not just use cryptpcurrency at this point?
Waiting two hours for my cryptocurrency transaction to process against a third party broker “NoScamSafeTransact.ru” only to discover that I’ve had my wallet hacked and all my funds plundered.
Lol well this depends on the crypto used and its hard to think that bank fees of any kind would be better than to just pay the fee to speed the transaction up.
Also, presumably they would use dummy wallets and not send amounts from their cold wallet with the full amount on it.
Idk, just seems like they deserve the trouble at this point if they can’t utilize the ways around it.
its hard to think that bank fees of any kind would be better than to just pay the fee to speed the transaction up
Paying which fee using what currency to which third party? Hell, can you even get a good conversion rate on Rubles to Yuan, by way of some third crypto broker, at this point? Seems like its the same problem (foreign brokers don’t trust Russian banks to process transactions) with extra steps.
Also, presumably they would use dummy wallets
Adding a fourth point of failure in my Ruble to Crypto to Yuan transaction. What could go wrong?
Idk, just seems like they deserve the trouble at this point
Tell you what. Take $10 and convert it to Rubles. Then convert those Rubles to crypto. Then cover the crypto to Yuan. Then buy something and ship it from China to Russia. And let me know how this experiment ends. Then you can wax poetic about how only an idiot wouldn’t be doing it your way.
