In a country blocked by the Western financial system, the term "stabilized currency" – which appeared only in Silicon Valley's White Paper – has quietly become the infrastructure on which ordinary people and businesses really depend。
By Anita
MOSCOW WINTER MORNINGS ARE ALWAYS SLOW. THE SUBWAY SLIPPED FROM A GREY RESIDENTIAL AREA INTO THE CENTER OF THE CITY, AND THE ADVERTISING SCREENS IN THE CARS ROLLED AS USUAL WITH RUBLE LOANS, NET PURCHASES AND SALES PROMOTION, ALONG WITH A SEEMINGLY NORMAL BANNER: "OVERSEAS INCOME SETTLEMENT." USDT TOO. IT IS HARD TO IMAGINE THAT, IN A COUNTRY BLOCKED BY THE WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM, THE TERM "STABILIZED CURRENCY" — WHICH APPEARED ONLY IN THE SILICON VALLEY WHITE PAPER — HAS QUIETLY BECOME THE INFRASTRUCTURE ON WHICH ORDINARY PEOPLE AND BUSINESSES REALLY DEPEND。
Alexei (alias) is 34 years old and claims to be an IT consultant, but his true identity is a small node in Moscow on a chain of stable currency black markets. At 9:00 a.m., he started his job by checking the Telegram channel. There are four or five groups on the cell phone, "Moscow USDT Circle Inner Prices", "Liberal Worker Clearing Channels", "Lub Crunch / Cartwright"
IN EACH GROUP THERE ARE ROBOTIC OFFERS - "BUY USDT 76.3 FOR SALE 77.1" - AND, AT A DEEPER LEVEL, DOZENS OF PRIVATE CHAT WINDOWS, YOUNG PEOPLE ENGAGED IN OUTSOURCING DEVELOPMENT, WHO EXCHANGE THE DOLLAR FROM THE EXTERNAL CARD TO USDT FOR RUBLES; SMALL COMPANIES THAT IMPORT SMALL PARTS, WHO PAY TURKISH SUPPLIERS WITH USDT; AND STRANGERS WITH ACCENTS, WHO SAY, "TURN UP, MEET UNDERLINE." I DON'T KNOW
Alexei’s profit is simple, either by making a small price difference through a small business, or by drawing a few thousand cents of the “procedures” with a larger exchange or trading platform on his back。
All of this appears to be a "exchange of funds", but the funds will soon be remitted into deeper dark streams。
Some deposit USDT into a Russian-language interface-friendly local trading platform, and then switch it to bitcoin, some wash their funds into offshore accounts through a Russian platform like Garantex, and others use it to supplement the liquidity of companies in Georgia and the United Arab Emirates。
AT NIGHT, HE'LL SPLIT THE USDT THAT HE EARNED THAT DAY INTO TWO PARTS, ONE INTO RUBLES, A MORTGAGE, A GROCERIES, THE OTHER, A QUIET LIE IN AN OVERSIGNED WALLET, AND WHEN THE SITUATION CHANGES, IT MAY BE THE LAST INSURANCE AT HOME。
On the statistical table, he is just a small point of "Russian Diaspora encrypted in"。
But all these points are linked to the invisible market。
Russian encrypted stories do not begin after sanctions。
In 2020, Eastern Europe was already one of the "highest crime-related encrypted transactions" worldwide. Chainalysis studies show that dark webs received a record $1.7 billion in encrypted currency that year, most of which went to one name: Hydra. Hydra is by far the largest darknet market in the world, with 75 per cent of the global darknet market being generated during the boom。
Before it was taken down by the German police in April 2022, it was in fact a huge "dark economic center" – drugs, false documents, money-laundering services, biological data, all “transactions not recognized in the official world” were settled in stable currency。
The collapse of Hydra did not allow the chain to disappear, but merely the redispersion of the shadow: its users, infrastructure, intermediary networks, and later regrouping between Garantex, Telegram OTC, and small trading platforms。
The dark side of Russia's encrypted economy, which did not emerge after sanctions, had a deep historical foundation。
Since the outbreak of the Russian-Uu-Ukrainian war in 2022 and the full escalation of sanctions, Russia has been surrounded in the traditional financial world by the freezing of foreign exchange reserves and the exclusion of major banks from the collective withdrawal of SWIFT, Visa and Mastercard. For a country where exports of energy and bulk commodities are at stake, this is almost equivalent to being strangled。
But the numbers on the chain give another story:
According to the Chainalysis statistics on European encryption activities from July 2024 to June 2025, Russia received $37,633 million in equivalent encrypted assets during this period, which is the first in Europe, well above the US$ 27,322 million. (https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/europe-crypto-adoption-2025)
Russia is no longer an invisible player in the mining of bitcoin. The most recent estimates of the Hasharte Index data platform show that, by the end of 2024, Russia accounted for about 16 per cent of the global bitcoin calculator — second only to the United States. (https://hashrateindex.com/blog/top-10-bitcoin-mining-country-of-2025)
These two figures are cold enough to show:
When the world tried to drive Russia out of the traditional financial system, a new, underground encrypted economy was growing rapidly。
If OTC traders like Alexei are pellets, local trading platforms like Garantex are the heart of the black market。
Garantex was first registered in Estonia, but its focus has been in Moscow. Beginning in 2022, it was placed on the sanctions list by the United States Department of the Treasury and the European Union, accused of facilitating extortion software, dark-net transactions and sanctioned banks。
Such platforms should have been "dead" by now. However, in September 2025, a report released by the International Union of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revealed that, despite multiple rounds of strikes, Garantex actually "continues in the shadows" by providing encrypted exchange and transfer services to clients in Russia and beyond through a series of offshore companies, mirror sites and proxy accounts。
More strikingly, an in-depth report from the chain analysis company TRM Labs states that in 2025 Garantex, together with Nobitex, the Iran trading platform, contributed over 85 per cent of the encrypted funds that went to sanctioned entities and jurisdictions。
In March 2025, Tether frozen the USDT wallets associated with Garantex, valued at approximately $280,000 (approximately 2.5 billion roubles), and the trading platform was forced to suspend operations. A few months later, however, the US Treasury Department sanctioned a new name: Grinex, "a platform created by Garantex's employees to help them circumvent the sanctions' encrypted currency trading platform."。
The black heart was punched and beat in a new form。
THE USDT IS THE MAIN ACTOR IN THE RUSSIAN SHADOW ECONOMY, BUT IN THE EYES OF MOSCOW OFFICIALS, IT ALSO HAS A FATAL PROBLEM — IT IS TOO “AMERICAN” AND TOO “CENTRALIZED”。
IN 2025, A NEW PIECE OF CHESS WAS QUIETLY PUT ON THE TABLE: A7A5, A STABLE CURRENCY ISSUED BY KYRGYZSTAN'S PLATFORM, KNOWN AS THE RUBLES。
The British Financial Times disclosed in an investigation that A7A5 had completed approximately $6-80 billion in equivalent transactions in four months, mostly on working days and concentrated in Moscow, with the bank of trust being the Russian sanctioned defence bank Promsvyazbank。
The EU and British sanctions documents simply describe them as “Russian instruments of sanctions evasion”. By October 2025, the European Union had formally placed A7A5 on the sanctions list, and the chain analysis company had pointed out that there was a close link between it and Garantex and Grinex - a new hub in the Russian network of encrypted liquidations。
A7A5 PLAYS A DELICATE ROLE:
1. FOR RUSSIAN COMPANIES, IT IS "A RUBLE OF STABILITY THAT CAN BYPASS USDT RISKS"
For regulators, it is a "hidden tool to chain rubles and bypass bank censorship"。
Behind this is an increasingly clear Russian idea: "If we can't get a stable currency, at least part of it will be printed by ourselves." I don't know
The paradox is that any attempt to move toward global stability depends on infrastructure beyond Russia’s control: public block chains, cross-border nodes, overseas trading platforms, and third-country financial systems。
A7A5 WANTS TO BECOME A "SOVEREIGN STABILITY CURRENCY" BUT HAS TO CIRCULATE IN A WORLD BEYOND RUSSIA'S CONTROL. THIS IS A MICROCOSM OF RUSSIA’S ENTIRE ENCRYPTION STRATEGY — BOTH TO MOVE AWAY FROM WESTERN FINANCE AND TO CONTINUE TO USE THE WESTERN SET OF “FINANCIAL BLOCKS ON THE CHAIN”。
The Western world tends to view encryption as an asset, a technology and even a culture. But in Russia, it has a completely different role:
RUSSIAN IMPORTS OF HIGH-TECH SPARE PARTS, DRONE COMPONENTS, INDUSTRIAL INSTRUMENTS AND EVEN CONSUMER GOODS, MANY OF WHICH CANNOT BE PAID THROUGH THE TRADITIONAL BANKING SYSTEM. SO THERE'S A HIDDEN BUT STABLE ROUTE: RUSSIAN COMPANIES EXPORT TO MIDDLE EASTERN/CENTRAL ASIAN INTERMEDIARIES, THEN CIRCULATE THROUGH USDT/USDC TO SUPPLIERS, AND THEN RETURN TO MOSCOW OTC FOR RUBLES。
It is not smart, it is not romantic, it is not "decentralized" but it can be used, dynamic and dynamic。
Encryption is not a dream here. It is the least efficient but the only dynamic realism。
The long-standing lack of confidence in the Russian banking system and the fragile manifestations of the Luble over the years have made encryption the most natural asset haven for middle class and young engineers。
You just ask a Moscow software engineer, and he tells you that maybe it's not "I bid the coin" but "I swapped my salary for USDT and put it at Telegram's credible OTC team." Banks freeze cards, but chains don't freeze me. I don't know
This is a microcosm of contemporary Russia。
Russia has one of the world's cheapest electricity — Siberia's hydropower, gas surplus — to become a Bitcoin mining paradise。
Mining offers: an "export" without a banking system, a globally convertible digital commodity, a way to circumvent the financial embargo
The Russian Ministry of Finance has on several occasions officially acknowledged that “drilling the proceeds of mines is an essential component of the national trading system. I don't know
This is no longer a private activity but a quasi-State economic sector。
While this part is difficult to quantify, the facts that exist include the use of encryption by the European intelligence services for information warfare, payment for hacking operations, large-scale underground funds travelling between Europe and Russia through stable currency, and the high dependence of various smuggling networks on the financial chain。
Is Russia the "encrypted power"What
The answer is more complicated than expected. If you measure technological innovation, no. If you use VC projects with DeFi to look, neither. If you measure mining, chain trade, stable currency inflows, trade settlement dependency, it is a hub of encryption that cannot be ignored globally。
It's not "volunteer," it's "rolled by the world."。
This paper is from a contribution and does not represent the point of view of Block Beats。