Russia Says Open To Crypto For International Transactions As Western Sanctions Bite

As the West tightens its sanction on Russia, the country’s central bank said it is open to allowing the use of cryptocurrency for international payments.

What Happened: First Deputy Governor Ksenia Yudaeva of The Central Bank of the Russian Federation on Tuesday told reporters that “in principle, we do not object to the use of cryptocurrency in international transactions,” according to Reuters.

Yudaeva reiterated that the Russian regulating authority continues to see the financial threat from the wider use of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin BTC/USD, Ethereum ETH/USD, and Dogecoin DOGE/USD.

See Also: Russia Estimates That Bitcoin, Ethereum, Crypto Mining Consumes 2% Of Total Electricity

“We still believe that the active use of cryptocurrency within the country, especially within Russia’s financial infrastructure, creates great risks for citizens and users. We believe that in our country, those risks could be reasonably large,” she said.

Why It Matters: Russia has been mulling bringing in laws to regulate the use of digital currencies in the country. Recently, the Russian deputy minister for trade and industry, Vasily Shpak, called for bringing the cryptocurrency industry under the purview of the law.

A recent government estimate shows that nearly 2% of the total electricity consumption in Russia goes into crypto mining.

Price Action: According to data from Benzinga Pro, Bitcoin was down 0.02% at $31,869 in the last 24 hours at the time of writing, while Ethereum and Dogecoin lost 1.87% and 0.78%, respectively.

Read Next: Ethereum Co-Founder Says Russia-Ukraine War Has Pushed Crypto Adoption To A Point Of 'No Return'