News Cryptomining Booms in Russia Despite US Sanctions

[Admin]

Bitmain and MicroBT expanding their shipments to Russia as U.S. market gets saturate.

Cryptomining Booms in Russia Despite US Sanctions : Read more

 

[InvalidError]

Russian oligarchs and Putin need ways to pull their money out of Russia and crypto is one of the easiest ways for them to dodge sanctions.

 

[atomicWAR]

Crypto being used for something dodgy. Who'd believe it? Oh yeah almost everyone...

 

[edzieba]

There's still no magic bullet: to turn those minted coins into anything else (i.e. use it as a fungible currency rather than as a value store) you need to persuade someone to take them in exchange for something. For financial transactions via an exchange, that means going via KYC (Know Your Client) and being rejected (if an exchange is willing to ignore sanctions and risk international ire then BTC can be skipped and a RUB<>USD exchange conducted directly). For hardware sales, that means finding someone both willing to buck sanctions and ship to Russia, whilst also accepting BTC (i.e. not China).
That leaves use by non-sanctioned foreign resident oligarchs for wealth flight - methods to take assets within Russia (i.e. energy) and move them outside of Russia, with no return. This is a process harmful for Russia, even if non-Russia-resident Oligarchs accessing (some of) their wealth they are cut off from is galling. There is the possibility of trying to end-run around sanctions by using BTC to transfer funds to 'trusted' non-sanctioned oligarchs and those oligarchs then using the 'clean' money to purchase goods for shipment to Russia, but that means a) those oligarchs would need to resist the urge to just take the money and thumb their noses at Russia (being Persona Non Grata already) and b) they would still be subject to KYC when purchasing hardware for shipment to Russia (or performing financial transactions with beneficiaries in Russia) so run the risk of being hit personally by turning rom non-sanctioned entities to sanctioned entities.

tl;dr and other cryptocurrencies are Super Happy Fun Libertarian Space Dollars as long as you transact only other for other Super Happy Fun Libertarian Space Dollars. Once you need to interact with traditional financial systems via fiat currency exchange or acquiring actual hardware, they offer about as much identity protection as a stick-on moustache.

 

[daworstplaya]

The crypto cockroaches are back again!

 

[InvalidError]

The crypto cockroaches are back again!

It is only bitcoin though, you'd go bankrupt trying to use GPUs for that. Nothing to worry about at least for now.