Russia has announced that it will implement a digital ruble by next July. Moscow will begin using cryptocurrency for some foreign transactions to bypass sanctions and SWIFT. As of November 2024, Russia will permit crypto mining, so long as it is carried out under the watchful eye of the government.
The Bank of Russia will oversee crypto mining and overriding capabilities. The Russian government, alongside the central bank, will select mining pool participants and protocols. Gone are the days when anyone could seemingly anonymously mine crypto, as Russia is one of many nations that will begin to require complete government oversight.
Beginning on September 1, Moscow will attempt to use crypto for foreign settlements while creating a new electronic platform through the National Payment System (NPS) within the EPR framework. The central bank is already stating that it must monitor activities to “identify risks” relating to national security and terrorism. This is precisely why other nations will also begin closely examining crypto transactions to ensure that the government has the upper hand.
As for the digital ruble, all operations will go through the Russian central bank. All of the CBDC will be stored through the central bank, which they ensure is for citizens’ safety. Each digital ruble will carry a unique code, similar to a banknote, and people may transfer rubles from one digital wallet to another – all under the watchful eye of government. The decree for the digital ruble was signed into law last August, but authorities believe the average person will begin using it by 2025.
Bank of Russia head, Elvira Nabiullina, claims the digital ruble will be optional. “If they want – they’ll use it, if they don’t – they won’t. No one is forcing anybody to use the digital ruble,” Nabiullina said. Yet, what happens when the seller or buyer is only accepting digital rubles? There is some vague language about digital rubles having codes for specific usage to deter crime. Governments want control and there is no better way to control the people than usurping the money supply and what can be considered “money.”
Removing Russia from SWIFT prompted these actions. “Over 30 regulators are currently working on national digital currencies,” Olga Skorobogatova, the first deputy chairwoman of the Bank of Russia, reported. “I think that this speed, with which the regulators have delved into this field, speaks volumes about the fact that, in 5-7 years, several countries surely will step forward with their own national digital currencies. Then, we can discuss the questions of direct integration. In that case, we no longer need SWIFT, since these are different technological interactions.”
The move to CBDC was an inevitable next step. The International Monetary Fund developed a coin long ago and other nations have been working alongside their central banks for years. It will be easy for Moscow to force its citizens and businesses to make the switch as they’ve already been removed from SWIFT and have had their foreign assets frozen for simply residing in the wrong nation. There is a reasonable fear that their money is not safe.
The year 2025, one year away, will bring about the rise of countless CBDC. The ultimate goal is to create one centralized currency. We saw that it epically failed in Europe as those nations are now under the control of the One World European government, the unelected officials in Brussels who silence their own member states from dissenting. Yet to begin, nations will begin pushing for the use of digital currency before outright canceling “hard money” under the premise that they are protecting their citizens. In all actuality, the elite believes all the money in circulation belongs to them, and the only way to guarantee maximum taxation is to transition the people to a controllable, non-tangible monetary system.
