Is Russia cooking up crypto-adoption plans? Judging by some of the recent comments made by Vladimir Putin and other government officials, it seems… possible.

Russia very much has a plan for “de-dollerisation” – to divorce itself from grips of the US dollar as the dominant, globally accepted means of international trade.

And its Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) is reportedly considering replacing the greenback with not only other traditional fiat currencies but also digital currencies – crypto. Maybe not dog-meme coins… although stranger things have happened.

In a Tuesday interview with the Russian news agency Interfax as reported by Cointelegraph, Aleksandr Pankin, deputy minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, reiterated plans to reduce the US dollar share in Russia’s international reserves and its usage in settlement with foreign partners.

“It’s possible to replace the US dollar with other currencies, both national and regional, as well as some digital assets in the long term,” said Pankin.

Scouting around Crypto Twitter for some reaction on this, we couldn’t go past this one from a pro-Bitcoin Tongan lord…

 

Crypto has the ‘right to exist’: Putin

Russia has looked for trading alternatives to the US dollar since being sanctioned in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea. And the nations’s president, Vladimir Putin, who has in the past accused the US of using its currency as a geo-political weapon, recently meanwhile expressed a tolerant stance on cryptocurrencies.

“[Cryptocurrency] has the right to exist and can be used as a means of payment,” Putin said in an interview with CNBC that was posted on the Kremlin’s website last week.

The Russian leader, who apparently was wearing a shirt and not on a horse in this interview, did add that he thinks it’s “a bit early” to use cryptocurrencies for settling oil trades.

“It is legitimate and can be used in settlements, no doubt about that, but it is too early to use it for trading in oil or other raw materials and energy sources,” said Putin, adding:

“We will see how this will go from here. Maybe crypto will one day be used to store value.”

And reiterating the eastern powerhouse’s crypto-tolerant stance, Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev last week confirmed that the Russian Federation has no intention of imposing a China-like crypto ban.

 

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