However, with such a passionate and partisan crowd, it is easy to lose objectivity and forget the elephant in the room...
Crypto is also able to bypass economic sanctions imposed by those nations opposing the war and as such, does that make us all complicit in lessening the effects that the sanctions imposed by united Western governments could have upon the Russian economy and its hoped effect in helping bring an end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
Will the very Russian government, the enemy we are aiming to bring to heel now also turn to crypto in an attempt to mitigate the effects of the sanctions?
If we separate state from citizen, crypto has the potential to help Russian citizens to bypass the restrictions they now face, which are massive.
Speaking to a friend there yesterday who lives in Moscow. Her Apple pay had stopped working, as had her Visa and Mastercard. She wasn't able to withdraw USD from the ATM as she and many Russians often use USD as their daily currency and her Roubles were worth 40% less than they were last week. Luckily she doesn't have a mortgage as the base interest rate has just risen to 20%.
Sanctions, whilst a necessary evil and infinitely better tool than to wade in with physical violence hurt citizens and yes, crypto can be a solution but there is another issue.
Crypto ties itself to the US dollar.
So to operate, crypto needs fiat as a comparator. In a perfect world where crypto was a true, useable alternative, it would only need its own indices and hopefully, this is what will happen in the future, perhaps where all daily crypto prices are based on their BTC value. This is something we all need to strive for but is ever going to happen while the vast majority of crypto users, including those on Hive, see crypto as nothing more than an alternative financial implement for trading to make dollars rather than taking an interest in the bigger picture.
Back to the current situation though...
Crypto can also help Russian citizens as they fight the personal effects of Western sanctions on their everyday lives but on the flipside of this double-edged coin, it can also help their government.
With all the back-slapping and glee at the rise in prices this morning, spare a thought.
Is this rise in crypto prices due to the Russian government buying up huge swathes of Bitcoin and if so, are we inadvertently supporting them? And if that's the case, does this make us question whether crypto helps or hinders in the current situation?
