Crypto assets are unlikely to be an effective solution “to circumvent sanctions and restore the rights of Russian citizens and the government’s ability to at least partially conduct financial transactions.”

RBC writes about this with reference to the report of the rating agency Moody’s.

Analysts pay attention, in particular, to low liquidity and the limited size of the cryptocurrency market in the Russian Federation. On the exchange, the liquidity of the ruble/bitcoin pair is about $200 thousand, on over-the-counter trading services – about $30 million per day. And Russian financial institutions daily make international transactions worth $46 billion, 80% of which are in dollars.

“Legal crypto exchanges must comply with anti-money laundering legislation, as well as track and disable blacklisted accounts,” experts say. It also complicates the use of cryptocurrencies to circumvent sanctions, according to Moody’s.

Some illegal platforms that worked for the Russian audience fell under Western sanctions. In particular, we are talking about the largest darknet platform Hydra Market.

Earlier it became known that Russia turned to Brazil with a request for support from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the G20 group of leading economies. This will help her resist sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.

Recall that the international rating agency S&P has downgraded Russia’s foreign currency credit rating to SD, which means “selective default “. The ruble credit rating remained at CC – default has not yet occurred, but it is expected that it will become almost inevitable.

The agency downgraded Russia’s rating in foreign currency after the Russian Ministry of Finance, for the first time since the start of the war against Ukraine and the introduction of new sanctions , could not pay off Eurobonds in dollars and transferred these payments in rubles.

Russia had already experienced a default in 1998, when this provoked a devaluation of the ruble and an increase in prices.

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