Sources: Russia uses cryptocurrency in oil trade with India to evade Western sanctions

According to BlockBeats, on March 14th, four sources familiar with the situation revealed that Russia is using cryptocurrency in its oil trade with India to evade Western sanctions. Although Russia openly encourages the use of cryptocurrencies and passed a law last summer allowing the use of digital currencies for payments in international trade, there have been no reports of their use in oil trade before. Sources say that some Russian oil companies are using stablecoins such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether to facilitate the process of exchanging Indian rupees for Russian rubles. They also added that in Russia's total oil trade worth $192 billion last year (according to the International Energy Agency), this portion of cryptocurrency transactions, although not significant, showed an increasing trend. Cryptocurrencies have previously helped countries like Iran and Venezuela, which are under US sanctions, maintain their economies while avoiding the use of the US dollar, the preferred currency for global oil market transactions. (Golden Ten)