Giving effect to mounting sanctions that effectively rendered the country’s ability to conduct international business in major globally-accepted currencies, Russia has been looking for other ways to clear its cross-border settlements. One of the ways it is considering: stablecoins.
“We are currently working with a number of countries to create bilateral platforms in order not to use dollars and euros,” said Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseyev.
One of these ways is to “offer mutually acceptable tokenized instruments” on clearing platforms currently being developed with so-called “friendly” countries.
“Stablecoins can be pegged to some generally recognized instrument, for example, gold, the value of which is clear and observable for all participants,” he added.
The move follows the earlier comments of the Finance Ministry and Russia’s central bank that “it is impossible to do without cross-border settlements in cryptocurrency” in the current situation.
As economic sanctions were hitting Moscow back in March 2022, State Duma committee chairman Pavel Zavalny announced that Russia is open to accepting various methods of payment for its exports such as cryptocurrency, saying “if [trade partners] want bitcoin, we will trade in bitcoin.”
Russia, now its 6th month into its invasion of Ukraine, has been finding ways to free up its reserves and move around the sanctions imposed on the country. One of the state banks created a new system that bypasses the internationally-used SWIFT system to send money transfers to other countries.
It has also been shoring up its revenue in yuan and increasing its foreign reserves in the Chinese currency. Although, the state authorities recently admitted that the investments in yuan are harder to withdraw without just reason that Beijing counterparts would find acceptable–effectively rendering its reserves in the said currency “hostage“.
Information for this briefing was found via Tass and the sources mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to this organization. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
