Russia and Venezuela’s Plan to Sidestep Sanctions: Virtual Currencies

Russian and Venezuelan officials are hoping virtual currencies can help their countries make an end run around American sanctions.

Both governments, with ambitions to create state-sponsored cryptocurrencies, are looking to take advantage of the promise that Bitcoin introduced to the world financial system: a new kind of money and financial infrastructure, outside the control of any central authority, particularly the United States.

.. “When it comes to state-sensitive types of activities, this instrument suits us very well,” one of Mr. Putin’s aides, Sergei Glazyev, said last month in a conversation about the crypto ruble, according to several Russian news outlets. “We can settle payments with our business partners all over the world regardless of sanctions.”

Dudley Says Fed Has Started Thinking About Official Digital Currency

Some academics have called for the Fed to offer its own digital currency. They believe it would afford the central bank better control over the economy by tweaking interest rates at the consumer level, bypassing fickle financial markets that often work at cross-purposes with Fed policy aims.

Supporters of official digital money say the central bank could end up being pushed off the sidelines if private efforts eventually succeed on a mass scale.