Cryptocurrencies are said to help weaken the US dollar

Russia wants to reduce its US dollar reserves and also use other currencies for international payments.
According to President Putin, however, it is “a little early” to use Bitcoin for oil transactions.

Russia is still a thorn in the side of the US dollar’s status as a world currency. Now, however, Moscow has devised another means of counteracting this. The Russian Foreign Ministry is reportedly considering not only opposing the US dollar with traditional fiat currencies. Cryptocurrencies are also said to increasingly undermine the supremacy of the dollar.

This is an interview by Aleksandr Pankin with the local Interfax news agency. Pankin is Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister. He announced that he would reduce the US dollar’s share of Russia’s international reserves. Even when settling accounts with foreign partners, you no longer want to fall back on the same motto. Russia has been considering steps to reduce the US dollar’s share of its $ 186 billion national welfare fund for several years. The local authorities plan to drastically increase their holdings of Chinese yuan and invest in gold.

The replacement of the dollar by another currency is by no means an end in itself, but a defensive reaction. We are not complaining about the dollar as such, nor are we calling for it to be abandoned at any cost. However, we have significant complaints about the financial policies of the state that issues them and which uses the national currency unit as an economic weapon at the international level

, Pankin explains Russia’s motivation. He stressed that the choice of the contract currency remains the prerogative of the contracting parties.


General crypto ban for Russia is not an issue

The use of currencies other than the US dollar in Russia’s payment transactions with foreign partners is only beneficial for its own economy. Pankin himself does not explicitly mention cryptocurrencies in the interview. After all, Moscow had not necessarily emerged as a big Bitcoin proponent until now. After all, the deputy finance minister Alexei Moiseev recently spoke out against a general crypto ban at least.

The latest statements by the Foreign Ministry could also be interpreted to mean that Russia is at least not uninterested in the use of crypto currencies for international processing. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week in an interview with CNBC that it was “a bit early” to use cryptocurrencies for the processing of oil deals. In the same breath, the president also admitted the potential of cryptocurrencies for global money transfer. According to the full interview text posted on the Kremlin’s official website, Putin said that private cryptocurrencies “can act as a unit of account” but are “very unstable”.


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