The Russian finance minister confirmed to Reuters that they were using bitcoin to settle payments in foreign trade:
Of course, some of us suspected this and wrote about it two months ago: @teatree/which-governments-are-mining-bitcoin
Once the Russians couldn't sell natural gas to Europe, it made sense to use this surplus energy to mine bitcoin.
Once you have bitcoin, you can either use a broker in Hong Kong to convert those bitcoins to dollars, and then another broker in Indonesia to use those dollars to buy sanctioned goods which are shipped to Russia.
Or they can offer to pay directly for sanctioned goods in bitcoin.
Once the Biden administration weaponised the dollar, it was inevitable an alternative would be found. Gold is too cumbersome to exchange in large quantities. No-one trusts the yuan or rupee. So it was inevitable crypto would be used.
Russia probably represents the biggest selling pressure in the bitcoin space. They badly need western parts and tech and the only way to buy it is to sell bitcoin.
This development is a dilemma for the bitcoin bros in the incoming Trump administration. The more bitcoin is normalised for use in trade, the less the dollar is used, which weakens the Americans' ability to throw their weight around and dominate the world's financial system.
Trump is an old guy, one of the last believers in Dollar Supremacy, as evidenced by his warning to the BRICs countries not to abandon the dollar. So there will be a clash between his older instincts, and the instincts of the bitcoiners in his administration.