Cryptocurrencies will not help cope with American sanctions

Countries that have fallen under Western sanctions see cryptocurrencies as a way to get around them. Russia is going to allow cryptocurrencies to be traded on the stock exchange, Venezuela is issuing oil tokens, and North Korean hackers are simply stealing crypto from the capitalists. But cryptocurrencies circumvent sanctions Bloomberg explains why cryptocurrencies will not help either Putin or Maduro bypass sanctions and return investments to the country.

Authoritarian regimes want to gain access to the global financial market, which they have been blocked by Western sanctions, with the help of tokens, and thus attract investors back to the country, writes Bloomberg .
In Russia, for example, the Ministry of Finance proposes to allow it to trade on stock exchanges. These amendments are being prepared for the new draft law “On Digital Financial Assets”, which will be released in February.
Anatoly Aksakov, Chairman of the State Duma Finance Committee, believes that cryptocurrencies and ICOs circumvent sanctions. will help potential investors in Russian projects, including those in Crimea,
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has announced the issuance of the oil cryptocurrency Petro. Each of the 100 million El Petros has the value of a barrel of oil. Maduro is confident that in this way he will be able to overcome the financial blockade of the United States.
Another sanctioned country, North Korea, has its own specific interest in foreign currency. Last year, the North Korean hacker group Andariel, for example, hacked into the server of a South Korean company and mined $25,000 worth of coins.
However, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last Friday that he was not worried that cryptocurrencies could become a means of circumventing sanctions - large crypto exchanges, like banks, are required to know their customers and comply with sanctions laws.
Even if you do not believe in the integrity of the exchanges, cryptocurrencies are not so widespread as to allow entire countries to bypass sanctions. Now the total capitalization of all tokens in the world is about $600 billion. This is about one sixth of the daily turnover of the American foreign exchange market . This amount is too small to allow even a small North Korea to bypass the sanctions.
Exporters of oil, whose entire trade is pegged to the dollar, will have particular difficulties with the use of cryptocurrencies.

What do I get from this?

All this is only to the advantage of investors - circumventing cryptocurrency sanctions may not help, but, for example, a relatively liberal law on the regulation of digital money may appear in Russia.

Marina Bocharova, The Bell