So individuals who recently left Russia out of fear for the regime and may be in very vulnerable positions have potentially unexpectedly lost access to their funds until they can sort that out...

Meanwhile, for The Real Russians, business as usual.

This looks like theatre hurting the wrong people.

Anyone who ran across the border and hoped to get their savings from inside Russia once out were naive (or more likely just in a hurry). This is one of few good use cases for cryptocurrency.

Getting hard currency in Russia right now is a long and difficult process, there's a massive shortage.

How difficult is it to get access to BTC? Does it trade at a premium?

What's wrong with getting savings across border using ATM cash withdrawal while abroad? Limits are quite high for debit cards (and could be customized via client support), ATM commissions in first world countries are more than reasonable (up to 0%).

There's a chance that this triggers EU, NATO, and partner countries to ban or heavily regulate cryptocurrencies.

Already on it, according to the director for cybersecurity and secure digital innovation for the US White House National Security Council.

https://events.trmlabs.com/trm-labs/TRM-Talks-Russia-Sanctio...

(They ask you to register to view but viewing is possible without verifying the e-mail)

Yes, imagine, you only need to remember 12 words!

This is still not a usecase for 'cryptocurrencies' at all. In fact the big crypto exchanges have now blocked Russian users.

There are ways to exchange fiat for cryptocurrency without going through a regulated business. Bisq, localcryptos, coordinating over chat and meeting up IRL.

Good luck finding someone to trade crypto tokens with without burning up the planet as with all these tokens do.

By the time you found someone and agreed, the price would have dropped 30%.

You might as well use the existing system.

Ok. So there's a war on, and I make a public post online advertising that I have a bunch of cash and I'd like to meet up to facilitate a trade...

Did you check out the anonymity properties of Bisq and localcryptos?

[citation needed]? I only know that Binance and Kraken specifically spoken against blocking the country.

To be more specific: They did not speak out about blocking "the country" but about closing accounts and restricting access for all Russian citizens/residents. They are, however, complying with targeted sanctions of the individuals on the sanction list.

If the scope of the OFAC sanctions forces the exchanges to start blocking Russian passport holders and/or residents, that will change, of course.

Kraken CEO tweet thread: http://nitter7bryz3jv7e3uekphigvmoyoem4al3fynerxkj22dmoxoq55...

Great, they can ban Russians when forced to anyway? So much for no censorship on crypto tokens even a South Korean crypto exchange has done it. [0]

We both know the writing is on the wall and crypto will end up being useless for Russian users.

[0] https://cryptopotato.com/south-korean-crypto-exchanges-block...

While you may know this, I know otherwise. Time will tell which of us has the more predictive knowledge.

It's not theatre, between this, and the trade disruptions, it's currently crippling the Russian domestic economy.

People at different levels of society are, of course, affected differently, but everybody's affected at this point. Even for an aristocrat, drinking moonshine in Krasnodar just doesn't have the same caché as Don Perignon in Paris.

Lyon Feuchtwanger, a Jew and anti-fascist who fled Hitler's Germany, lost all his savings in banks in the US, Canada, Britain and France. Because of the sanctions imposed on him as a German citizen. The only bank he still had money in his account in 1945 was ...German.

Any citation on that?

In his books (likely in autobiographical "Unholdes Frankreich")

But imagine the disruption for ordinary citizens. Like you won't be able to renew your domain names, or pay for office 365/gsuite/aws/azure. Companies who didn't migrate to the cloud won't look so stupid.

Stephen Kotkin warned in a recent interview that the russians have their own way they can wreck havoc in our economies, like cutting undersea cables. And I also wonder if at one point the loss of revenues from cutting gas to europe will be worth given the economic impact it will inflict on the west (power cuts/lack of heating all over europe, price of gas sky-rocketting, etc).

Note that cutting the gas aligns with what the West citizen broadly want: Being forced faster than later to get rid of fossil energy. EU leaders certainly didn’t aim to secure the gas supply, they put all their might into sanctioning Russia “even if it costs the gas supply”.

At this point I’m wondering whether Russia knows it and wants to impose any sanction except cutting the gas.

Western citizens to not broadly want that at all. They may say they do not that's conditional on a lot of unstated assumptions, like it not causing electricity to become unaffordable or entirely unavailable. Both of which would be likely consequences of an energy was with Russia. The moment that happens, people sitting in the cold will suddenly remember that Ukraine is a foreign country and they aren't actually at war.

If Russia cuts the undersea cables that's going to be even worse for them.

> will no longer be supported

On an completely unrelated note I'm sad to observe how corporate speech alters the language. I'm sure it's called "will be rejected" not "will no longer be supported".

I have an ancient smartphone that's "no longer supported" and it still works. I'm sure the message meant that Russian cards won't, but I guess as people got routinely scared to use anything but the vaguest terms it became a habit.

In Russia, all country-local Visa and MasterCard payments are processed by country-owned NSPK system https://nspk.com

So all local payments will work, but no abroad payments (and no foreign cards to pay locally in Russia). Probably, I will lost most of my cloud data and compute resources incl. VPNs. Fortunately, some providers do accept SWIFT payments.

Do the providers accept ruble? My understanding is that foreign currency transfers to outside was banned (capital control).

It is partially banned/restricted for companies only. Personal transactions do work well. However, there 12% tax on buying currencies on currency exchange for both companies and personal accounts

You can always ask to borrow someone's card who doesn't live in Russia...

Yeah, that's what I will probably do. However, this doesnt sound secure, and some providers do check if card holders equals to account owner

And how do you pay them back?

Work...