I made a post yesterday morning about the IMF (International Monetary Fund) being sacred of Russia evading sanctions using bitcoin or crypto because it is the third-largest bitcoin miner in the world, they also have billions of dollars in Crypto, which is equivalent to trillions in the Russian ruble, and let's not forget Russia is well-positioned when it comes to Bitcoin mining because of its surplus energy resources and good cold climate condition, the IMF report said that Russia will channel the excess energy that is not sold due to sanctions into Bitcoin mining which is a way to evade sanctions.
Bitcoin mining is a decentralized activity and not just that it is being done in Russia without the interaction with the United States or European Union, Russian miners do their mining in Russia and get rewarded in Russia, and miners rarely sell. The question now is how will U.S. Treasury stop Bitcoin mining in Russia? I was so curious How exactly that was going to work? Because right now Bitcoin ASIC mining machines aren't built in the united states. So how would the U.S. Treasury Department actually sanction Bitcoin mining in Russia, are they going to ask China to not ship hardware to Russia? are they going to ask Russian electric companies to not provide power to Russian businesses?. Then I did further research and saw that there is or could be a possibility for the sanction to actually work.
I know it's not possible for the U.S. Treasury Department to stop mining in Russia but they can make it extremely difficult for Russia to get the equipment required to mine Bitcoin because of Russian reliance on fiat as payment and the importation of equipment required to mine Bitcoin make Russia vulnerable to sanctions if and when the united states decides to become a stumbling block to companies who provide Russia with these services.
According to this report I read during my research:
“Treasury can and will target those who evade, attempt to evade, or aid the evasion of U.S. sanctions against Russia, as they are helping support Putin’s brutal war of choice,” said Brian Nelson, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. “The United States will work to ensure that the sanctions we have imposed, in close coordination with our international partners, degrade the Kremlin’s ability to project power and fund its invasion.”
And also Bitcoin miner BitRiver, who as of 2021 became a Switzerland-based holding company, operates the data centers in Siberia (a vast region of Russia and N Kazakhstan), and its 10 Russia-based subsidiaries are sanctionable because BitRiver works across the EU and Asia. So yeah, it is possible for the big international players (U.S. and EU) to force changes in order to stop the ongoing war in Russia.
THANKS GUYS FOR READING MY POST.
PLEASE FOLLOW ME ON:
Discord: onwugbenuvictor#3447
Twitter: @VictorOnwugbenu