Ethereum: Russia's Next Oil Strike

In Russia, blockchain eat you

I found a couple of stories on Coindesk that show the rapidity with which Russia is embracing blockchain technology. See my blog post about it. The main state-owned economic development bank, VEB, and a handful of Russian ministries are building a blockchain research center to develop new technologies and act as a breeder reactor for them.

This was announced at a three-day conference in Tartarstan in which Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buterin, was a speaker.

The latest wrinkle is the Ethereum Foundation has signed a deal with VEB to assist the build out of the research center with the goal of making it an incubator for ethereum-based technologies.

The focus of Buterin’s comments were on the application of Ethereum to the public administration sphere. This follows up and puts paid the earlier announcements of Masterchain, an ethereum-based financial messaging system.

If you haven’t gotten the memo yet as to how important the blockchain is to Putin and the Russian leadership yet, I give you the title of this conference:

Blockchain: The New Oil of Russia

From a geopolitical standpoint it is imperative for them to do so.

The U.S. has so many financial weapons at its disposal, most importantly, SWIFT, the worldwide standard for inter-bank communication.

And I fully expect things to degenerate to that point over the next twelve months as Russian presidential elections approach. Putin is, like Donald Trump, someone the Powers That Be does not control.

In fact, he is quite the opposite; a man on a mission to free Russia for the first time in over one hundred years from the yoke of external control.

This is a major story that continues to develop at a break-neck pace, or, more appropriately, a blockchain pace. With the Waves Platform gaining traction alongside Ethereum Russia looks uniquely placed to spearhead a different way to do business.

Add in Russian Miner Coin and their goal to control up to 30% of the Bitcoin mining pool using non-U.S. built ASICs and you have a complete nightmare from a National Security Council perspective.

If the world is moving towards the blockchain then it's pretty obvious this is something that cannot be tolerated by those that think they run the world.

30% of the hashing power to fuel the asset most likely to act as a digital analogue to gold in whatever monetary system comes next?

This will not stand.

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