{"id":64019,"date":"2025-12-17T14:46:34","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T14:46:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=64019"},"modified":"2025-12-17T14:46:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T14:46:34","slug":"no-crypto-payments-russia-draws-line-on-bitcoin-ethereum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=64019","title":{"rendered":"No Crypto Payments: Russia Draws Line On Bitcoin, Ethereum"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Russia\u2019s crypto payment rumor mill just got another hard \u201cno.\u201d Anatoly Aksakov, the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets, said cryptocurrencies \u201cwill never\u201d function as money inside Russia \u2014 and that if you\u2019re paying for something domestically, it\u2019s rubles or nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt must be understood that cryptocurrencies will never become money within our country. They can only be used as an investment tool. If you want to pay for something, you can only do so with rubles,\u201d Aksakov said<\/a> at a press conference hosted by TASS.<\/p>\n

Russia Rejects Crypto Payments<\/h2>\n

That line lands because, for years, there\u2019s been a steady drip of \u201cmaybe Russia will allow\u201d crypto payments chatter<\/a> \u2014 and it\u2019s not always completely baseless. The country has been trying to route around sanctions pressure, and crypto keeps popping up in the conversation. When officials talk up \u201csettlements\u201d and \u201ctrade,\u201d plenty of people hear \u201cpayments\u201d and assume that means everyday retail use is next.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t. At least not in the way crypto Twitter likes to imagine. Aksakov\u2019s comments track with the central bank\u2019s position. Bank of Russia governor Elvira Nabiullina told lawmakers earlier this year that crypto can\u2019t be used for domestic settlements, while also pointing to a separate experimental legal regime (ELR) that allows crypto to be used in foreign trade under controlled conditions.<\/p>\n

That split \u2014 \u201cno\u201d at home, \u201cmaybe\u201d abroad \u2014 is the whole story. Russia has been building carve-outs for cross-border use, including frameworks that allow exporters and importers to use crypto in international settlements under foreign trade contracts.<\/p>\n

And officials have been unusually blunt about the motivation. In late 2024, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Russia had begun using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for international trade under a special legal regime. So yes, crypto gets used. Just not the \u201cpay your landlord in ETH\u201d version.<\/p>\n

The other source of confusion is that policy tone has softened around investing \u2014 even while payment bans stay in place. In March that the central bank proposed an experimental program that would let \u201cspecially qualified\u201d wealthy investors<\/a> buy crypto, explicitly keeping the domestic payment ban intact.<\/p>\n

And regulators have still shown they\u2019re willing to swing a hammer<\/a> at the retail plumbing when they want to, like the reported blocking of crypto-related services.<\/p>\n

In other words: Russia\u2019s message is basically \u201cspeculate if you must, trade if you\u2019re authorized, settle cross-border if you\u2019re inside the sandbox \u2014 but inside the country, the ruble stays the only checkout option.\u201d And for anyone still clinging to the payment narrative: this was the door closing sound.<\/p>\n

At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $2.92 trillion.<\/p>\n

\"Total<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia\u2019s crypto payment rumor mill just got another hard \u201cno.\u201d Anatoly Aksakov, the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets, said cryptocurrencies \u201cwill never\u201d function as money inside Russia \u2014 and that if you\u2019re paying for something domestically, it\u2019s rubles or nothing. \u201cIt must be understood that cryptocurrencies will never become money within […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-64019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}