This reminds me of my honeymoon vacation. My wife and our baby daughter were visiting friends in Argentina. They told us to bring our whole vacation budget in 100 EUR bills and they'd exchange it for us into Pesos on the black market at a much better rate. The physical bills were really cumbersome to carry around and keep safe - I believe the highest denomination was around 10 EUR.

This is when I understood the privilege of living in a relatively stable monetary system with a highly valued currency.

Russian monetary system was pretty stable by the way. It's not about financial institutions doing a bad job, it's just a dictator not accountable to anyone waging wars he can't afford.

> This is when I understood the privilege of living in a relatively stable monetary system with a highly valued currency.

Very true. I am grateful to be living in America where people are valued and it is hard for autocrats to stay in power (Trump certainly came close). A life lived in a pariah state is a life wasted.

Living in such a system is not a matter of privilege - Argentinians have consistently made voting choices that have put them in that position.

The rate for buying USD is 132 RUB in my bank app

Why would there be a black market? Is it because the average Russian citizen can't get access to a service such as Wise to exchange currency?

Because access to foreign currencies is quite limited in Russia right now.

$1 in cash is worth more than $1 in your Russian bank account.