A country that has spent years under Western sanctions—and its biggest bank—is now getting into Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The news is that Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, was added on the 12th of this month to the Russian central bank’s register of crypto exchange operators. The related trading services are reportedly set to launch before the end of the year. A bank on a sovereign scale is planning to officially give customers access to BTC and ETH within a regulated framework.
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There are two especially interesting things about this.
First, after more than a decade of crypto preaching borderlessness, the most enthusiastic users have turned out to be economies shut out of the dollar system. Second, the ones who actually opened this door were regulators, not the cypherpunks of old.
Think about it: the original Bitcoin story was about bypassing banks. Now banks themselves have become one of the biggest gateways. Does this mean crypto has won, or that it’s been co-opted?
What’s more subtle is that Sberbank’s international business was among the hardest hit by the cutoff. Now that it’s stepping into crypto, it’s effectively reconnecting some of the cross-border channels it lost back then—just by a different route.
Of course, some people think that with a country as large as Russia getting involved, it’s probably out of necessity, not ideology. It simply needs a settlement channel that can’t be shut off.
So tell me: when a sanctioned country uses crypto as a channel, do you see it as an exit toward freedom, or as another road controlled by someone else? Which side are you on?
The news is that Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, was added on the 12th of this month to the Russian central bank’s register of crypto exchange operators. The related trading services are reportedly set to launch before the end of the year. A bank on a sovereign scale is planning to officially give customers access to BTC and ETH within a regulated framework.
👉 关注我，点击进入聊天室，学习更多策略
There are two especially interesting things about this.
First, after more than a decade of crypto preaching borderlessness, the most enthusiastic users have turned out to be economies shut out of the dollar system. Second, the ones who actually opened this door were regulators, not the cypherpunks of old.
Think about it: the original Bitcoin story was about bypassing banks. Now banks themselves have become one of the biggest gateways. Does this mean crypto has won, or that it’s been co-opted?
What’s more subtle is that Sberbank’s international business was among the hardest hit by the cutoff. Now that it’s stepping into crypto, it’s effectively reconnecting some of the cross-border channels it lost back then—just by a different route.
Of course, some people think that with a country as large as Russia getting involved, it’s probably out of necessity, not ideology. It simply needs a settlement channel that can’t be shut off.
So tell me: when a sanctioned country uses crypto as a channel, do you see it as an exit toward freedom, or as another road controlled by someone else? Which side are you on?