I believe everyone must have heard/read the announcement that Russia is interested in allowing Bitcoin mining, and Bitcoin protocol usage itself?

This is the narrative behind it, https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/26/investing/swift-russia-ukraine/index.html

If Russia invades Ukraine, the E.U. and the U.S. will sanction them and ban them from using SWIFT, therefore isolating their banking system. If only there was an open, permissionless protocol that can be used as a fall back for their banking system.

Today I saw on TV news with reference to the words of Russian President Putin that Russia is not afraid of being cut off from the SWIFT international banking system, since there is a good currency, the yuan. It is possible that Putin even has in mind the digitized yuan, which China promises to officially launch by the opening of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, that is, on February 04. I think that this is a significant exaggeration of his capabilities on the part of Putin, and he is still afraid of being cut off from SWIFT, but they deliberately deny the negative consequences of current and future international sanctions. But surely in Russia they will not turn to bitcoin or any other decentralized currency in order to circumvent international sanctions. The Chinese digitized yuan is more suitable for this. But for certain operations, the Russian government may well use bitcoin.

All the main reasons that this government has used as a way to ban Bitcoin in their countries doesn’t really make sense to me. Okay, they say that Bitcoin is being used for illicit activities, but the last time I checked, Bitcoin is the least currency that all these people who engage in illicit activities would like to consider. Unless maybe other cryptocurrencies, because illicit activities has been moving to other crypto currencies that can have privacy more than Bitcoin.

But as for Bitcoin, it cannot be their choice because they can be caught while making use of Bitcoin. Then talking about terrorism, I have not heard of any news of Bitcoin being used to fund terrorism yet, which I also think is just like being used for illicit activity, and would unlikely be considered by any of these.

Then another one is the fact that Bitcoin mining consumes a lot of energy, the last time I also checked, Bitcoin is the least thing that consumes energy when compared to other industries like health, building and the rest of them. So, why then do they ban bitcoin, or do they feel it is giving too much freedom to people? Which I know for sure that china doesn’t like giving too much of freedom to their citizens.

I don't think such sanction ever happens because it would harm US more than it harms Russia. There are already plans among the Easter block to abandon US dollar as it is, if US pushes them in that direction they would lose a massive volume from Russia, China and a bunch of other allied countries and that can easily tank US dollar sooner than previously expected.

Interestingly enough bitcoin adoption is growing among these governments. A couple of years ago Iran adopted bitcoin for its import exports and also made it official recently. Others are following in those footsteps.

russia is a country of a modern dictatorship, they in an ideology that will hardly accept bitcoin even if they were in the worst of the worst situations, even if they were starving the russian government would continue with their ideology until one day the opposition won and took them out power



as i've been saying russia will not use bitcoin they may even prefer to use china currency or china support than to use bitcoin

It currently won’t, but if a hot war happens to start between Russia/China, and the U.S./Europe? Because if Russia invades Ukraine, it might prompt China to make their move on Taiwan. Japan will ally with the U.S., North Korea with China, just a shower thought for the sake of discussion.


After El Salvador’s mining through volcano power, Russia/Iran mining through Nuclear power.

That’s another debate altogether. War or without war, it’s also another debate if Russia will accept/regulate Bitcoin mining, or mine Bitcoin themselves as a preperation for U.S. sanctions, and to use Bitcoin as a protocol/alternative for SWIFT/a settlement layer. The technology works, it’s robust, and it has been chugging along without down time.

I'm a bit surprised it has taken them this long to plan it out ^{[AFAIK, they first started having discussions back in 2019]} and I also noticed that despite being a joint effort, the highlighted part seems to be in favor of Iran.

Until 2140 or as soon as it becomes more stable

Perhaps not, but that's also the question. It won't matter if the price is manipulated, because technically and politically, if it gives its participants the advantage of breaking down, and weakening political strongholds implemented by the West, it probably could be a more feasible solution to their problem. I believe they have deep knowledge of Bitcoin, and that it could be useful for what they want to do, but they will never admit it.