Generally when "[economic] sanctions or similar are in place against you" it's because the people who imposed the sanctions are physically unable to jail you. Or beat you with a wrench.

The tech doesn't change the policy or the law, but it does change their consequences in the real world. Fortunately it is not yet the case that the US shells every country whose citizens do business with entities it imposes sanctions on, although the US does shell a lot of countries, and it can be challenging to identify even which country a Bitcoin transaction originates from.

What's your source for "Russia is exploring crypto for transfers if they get knocked off of SWIFT"? I assume you mean cryptocurrencies of some kind, because obviously SWIFT, СПФС, and CIPS all use cryptography, so that would be too obvious to mention. Right now I think Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency with enough trading volume to handle Russia's foreign exchange needs; I don't think that's likely to happen in the next two years, though, if it ever happens at all.

If it did happen, though, it would put an end to the concerns that Bitcoin could collapse at any moment like a Ponzi scheme.

> What's your source for "Russia is exploring crypto for transfers if they get knocked off of SWIFT"? I assume you mean cryptocurrencies of some kind, because obviously SWIFT, СПФС, and CIPS all use cryptography, so that would be too obvious to mention. Right now I think Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency with enough trading volume to handle Russia's foreign exchange needs.

EDIT: If you're looking for a press release from the Kremlin, no, I'm unlikely to be able to get something official from Vlad, only public news sources.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/business/russia-sanctions...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-24/russia-bi...

https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-could-bypass-president...

None of these substantiate the claim that "Russia is exploring crypto for transfers"; they just point out, as I did above, that people outside Russia say Russians could hypothetically use cryptocurrencies for transfers despite US sanctions. None of them even propose that the Russian government use cryptocurrencies for its own foreign trade, and none of them claim to have any Russian sources at all, whether officials or leaks or civilians. The Cointelegraph article claims that Maduro proposed doing this in the past (for Venezuela) and that Iranians raising money for flood relief have actually done so.

Russia doesn't need to resort to Bitcoin, when they can easily use their own SWIFT alternative or China's. China is conveniently friendly with Russia these days, is rapidly expanding CIPS, and would likely welcome the chance to expand it even more.

The existence of these alternatives is one reason Russia probably won't be banned from SWIFT in the first place.

Archive from The Economist: https://archive.is/CHiiI

It'll be interesting to see how it unfolds. Presumably for Russia to use СПФС or CIPS other countries (or banks?) have to use it too, otherwise they can only pay themselves.

Are there any downsides to making a payment through СПФС rather than SWIFT? For example, are you revealing information to the ФСБ, or exposing yourself to counterparty risk from the Russian government, or making it possible for the Russian government to cut you off from your payees if they want to level economic sanctions against you? A potential upside of Bitcoin in this sort of situation is that it's neutral: nobody can cut off your access to it, everybody can see your transactions (but without names and places), and you're only exposed to counterparty risk for the few minutes until your transaction is confirmed.

But, again, I don't think that'll happen in the next couple of years, and possibly never.

If Russia pour a trillion into crypto it would boost cryto like crazy.

Governments are buying oil and other products from Russia and need a way pay them. Russian banks will move money outside of swift. Swift just makes it easier.

I always found it sickly charming that they call that method of hacking "rubber-hose cryptanalysis"