Fears from regulators around the world that Russia is using Bitcoin to evade sanctions seem to be coming true. Today, a high-ranking Russian government executive is helping the country’s authorities for natural gas and energy exports. Bitcoin (BTC) revealed that they were open to accepting payments.
Pavel Zavalny, deputy of the Duma committee, said at a news conference on Thursday that he will stop accepting payments in US dollars (USD) and euros (EUR) because both fiat currencies no longer have any value. Announcing this development, the executive said that the country could accept a variety of currencies, including the flagship digital asset, for export, depending on the payment method preferred by buyers.
“Now that USD/EUR has become quite worthless, we prefer solid money like Gold or allied currencies like Yuan or TRY, if it’s Bitcoin then it’s fine. So we are open to various currencies… If they want Bitcoin, we will also trade with Bitcoin.”
BREAKING: RUSSIA OPEN TO TAKING PAYMENTS FOR NATURAL GAS IN #BITCOIN – CHAIR OF CONGRESSIONAL ENERGY COMMITTEE 🇷🇺 pic.twitter.com/oKS1TZEouG
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) March 24, 2022
Zalvany also added that Russia is not against accepting payments in Chinese Yuan and Turkish Lira as they are friendly countries in their cases, and if these countries want to convert their payment options to Bitcoin, Russia will be open to this as well:
“As for our ‘friendly’ countries, such as China or Turkey, that do not put pressure on us, we have been offering them for some time to convert payments into national currencies such as the ruble and the yuan. For Turkey, this can be lira and ruble.”
News about the possibility of Russia accepting Bitcoin for energy payments played a large part in pushing the asset’s value to $44,000. According to data from CoinGecko, the asset’s value has increased by about 4 percent over the past 24 hours.
Russia, Bitcoin and the International Community
It has been in the news before that the international community has warned that Russia could use Bitcoin and other digital assets to evade sanctions.
That announcement came less than two days after President Vladimir Putin ordered the payment of gas contracts in rubles with “non-enemy countries” such as the United States, in his quest to force the world to re-engage with the country.
The crypto community, on the other hand, vehemently dismissed the possibility of this happening as the country would need massive amounts of liquidity to achieve this. At the same time, the community also noted that the nature of blockchain technology would make it impossible to hide transactions that much.
Alongside the US, the European Union had imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia that caused the country’s national currency, the Ruble, to depreciate.
In response, Ukraine has received a tremendous amount of support from the crypto community. The community supports Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Polkadot (DOT), etc. He has donated more than $70 million to the war-torn country using digital assets.
Disclaimer: What is written here is not investment advice. Cryptocurrency investments are high-risk investments. Every investment decision is under the individual’s own responsibility. Finally, Koinfinans and the author of this content cannot be held responsible for personal investment decisions.