Dusseldorf Russia could make it possible for “friendly countries” to pay for Russian oil and gas deliveries in rubles, their national currencies or bitcoins in the future. This was announced by Pavel Zavalny, the chairman of the Duma Committee on Energy last week.
The friendly states include China and Turkey. The EU states and the USA, as “unfriendly states”, should only pay their gas bills in rubles, at least according to the announcement by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Bitcoin investors should also be pleased that an EU ban on the so-called proof-of-work method, on which the Bitcoin blockchain is based, is off the table for the time being.
This news has recently driven the Bitcoin price up. It is now trading well above the $47,000 mark again and is thus as high as it was at the beginning of the year. However, the all-time high of November 2021 is still a long way off at around $69,000.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
Bitcoin up around 15 percent on a weekly basis
Nevertheless, a positive trend can be observed. The world’s largest crypto currency was able to achieve a weekly increase of around 15 percent. New York correspondent Astrid Dörner writes regularly on the subject and in the new episode of “Handelsblatt Today” she puts the current situation on the crypto market into perspective.
Also, since the Ukraine war broke out, the relationship between China and Russia has been opaque, with signals pointing in different directions. In our Handelsblatt interjection on Asia Business Insights, the head of the foreign department, Nicole Bastian, discussed with several experts how China is positioning itself towards Russia, what effects this is having on security policy and how this is affecting the international economy.
We have an exclusive subscription offer for you as a Handelsblatt Today listener. Interested? Then take a look here.
If you have any comments, questions, criticism or praise for this episode, please email us at: [email protected]