BY ANNA HIRTENSTEIN AND CHEN AIZHU
Russia is using cryptocurrencies in its oil trade with China and India to skirt Western sanctions, according to four sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
While Russia has publicly encouraged the use of crypto and last summer passed a law to allow digital currency payments in international trade, its use in the country’s oil trade has not previously been reported.
Some Russian oil companies are using bitcoin, ether and stablecoins such as Tether to smooth the conversion of Chinese yuan and Indian rupees to Russian roubles, the sources said, adding that it is a small but growing part of Russia’s overall oil trade, which according to the International Energy Agency was worth $192 billion last year.
All the sources declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Cryptocurrencies have already helped enable countries under US sanctions such as Iran and Venezuela to keep their economies running while avoiding use of the dollar, the preferred currency for transactions in the global oil market.
Russia’s move comes after Venezuela accelerated its use of digital currency in crude and fuel exports after Washington reimposed sanctions.
Russia has set up a variety of systems and USDT (Tether) is just one of them, said a fifth source, a researcher at an investigations firm which tracks the use of cryptocurrencies for sanctions circumvention, who asked not to be named because of a non-disclosure agreement.
