Russian oil companies rely on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stablecoins for trades with China and India: report

Russian oil companies use Bitcoin, Ethereum and Stablecoins to convert the Chinese Yuan and Indian rupees to rubles for trade while Western sanctions persist.

Faced with Western sanctions, Russian oil companies are actively turning to cryptocurrencies to move money between China and India, Reuters A learned citing sources nearby.

One of the sources says that some Russian oil companies use Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (Ethn), and stablecoins like Tether (USDT) to smooth the conversion of the Chinese yuan and Indian rupees into Russian rubles. Although more companies use crypto, it is still a small part of Russia oil trade, they add.

In an example, a Chinese buyer pays a commercial company in Yuan in an offshore account. Then, the intermediary “converts this to crypto and transfer it to another account and from there, he is sent to a third account in Russia and converted into rubles,” explained two sources. For a Russian oil trader, “cryptographic transactions are in the tens of millions of dollars a month,” said a familiar source with the merchant’s operations.

Crypto.News before reported that the Russian bank proposed a regulated framework for cryptocurrency investments under an experimental legal regime of three years. The plan would limit participation in “particularly qualified” investors with more than 100 million rubles in securities and deposits or an annual income exceeding 50 million rubles.

In May 2024, Bloomberg also reported The fact that the two largest producers of unauthorized metals in Russia began to use the Stablecoin USDT of Tether for cross -border transactions with Chinese customers and suppliers.

The quarter of work occurred after the US Treasury had warned that it would impose secondary sanctions on the financial institutions helping the escape of sanctions. The leaders of anonymous companies explained that certain transactions are processed via Hong Kong, although the total volume of exchanges is not clear.