According to Bloomberg, all the attempts made by authoritarian governments and dictators to get around Western sanction are vain.
While North Korean hackers are stealing bitcoins, Venezuela n President Nicolas Maduro is launching a national cryptocurrency while backing it with massive oil inventories to get international investors back. At the same time, the Russian Ministry of Finance is working hard to come up with legislation allowing some legal entities to enter the global international market of cryptocurrencies and trade them on online exchanges.
The cryptocurrency craze in those countries seems to be underway. The thing is that the West imposed some sanctions on them to prevent them from entering international financial markets. So, they hope to get around them by accessing cryptocurrencies instead.
However, the experts say that while those cryptocurrencies can be used to get around any sanctions by a handful of companies and individuals, this is not going to save the day for the entire economies since the market is still too young and small. According to Coinmarketcap, the total market cap of all the cryptocurrencies altogether is around 700 billion dollars. For the sake of comparison, this is 1/7 of the daily forex turnover. By the way, forex is a legal and internationally recognized financial market, actually the world’s biggest one.
So, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury isn’t warried about the possibility of Russia and other dictatorships using cryptocurrencies to try and get around those sanctions since online exchanges do require verification and the same info that banks do. So, fromthisprospect, thereisnobigdifference.
On top of that, the Western sanctions are aimed at specific companies and individuals rather than assets, that’s why they work for each source of income they count on. And even if some investors get interested in Venezuela n oil-backed cryptocurrency, them may fall prey to the same sanctions as well.
Using cryptocurrencies to cheat is especially difficult for oil exporters since they still need dollars to sell crude oil anyway. However, those isolated nations may well be using cryptocurrencies to move funds worldwide. This is what the Western financial authorities should be worried about.
