Russia’s digital ruble won’t help the country avoid U.S. sanctions
because the global economy is “interconnected,” an official said.
Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) like Russia’s digital ruble do
not pose any threat to United States sanctions, according to U.S.
Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo.
In a CNBC interview on Wednesday, Adeyemo argued that the U.S. dollar “will remain the dominant currency in the world” despite the increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies.
Adeyemo
pointed out that digital assets provide an “opportunity in lots of
ways” for the U.S. economy, but it’s also associated with many
challenges such as money laundering. However, there are ways to combat
this in order to benefit from the growing industry. The official said:
“We
do think that ultimately working together with countries around the
world, we can address this risk by calling on the creators of digital
assets to follow the rules around Anti-Money Laundering more closely.”
Adeyemo
also suggested that digital currencies by global central banks are not
associated with any risks in terms of U.S. sanctions.
“We believe
that even if a digital ruble or other digital currencies come into
place, there will still be scope for our sanctions to have an impact on
their economies simply because the global economy is still
inter-connected,” he said.
The official went on to say that
companies in Russia do a lot of business around the world, with much of
it being done in U.S. dollars with American financial institutions
because the “American economy remains the biggest economy in the world.”
“As
long as that is the case, and as long as we make the investments that
are needed, we are still going to have the ability to use our sanctions
regime to make sure that we prevent the thing that it was created to
prevent,” the official noted.
Adeyemo’s remarks come shortly after sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska called on the Russian government to adopt Bitcoin (BTC)
as a tool to avoid U.S. sanctions and weaken the U.S. dollar. “The U.S.
had realized long ago that uncontrolled digital payments are capable of
not only nullifying the effectiveness of the entire mechanism of
economic sanctions but also taking down the dollar as a whole,” he
argued last month.
Related: US Treasury says it must ‘modernize and adapt’ to digital currencies
In
October, the deputy minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia also
reiterated Russia’s plans to reduce the U.S. dollar share in Russia’s
international reserves as part of the country’s plan to avoid challenges posed by sanctions from the U.S. government.
The
U.S. has imposed a number of sanctions on Russia in recent years for
reasons such as suspected poisoning of opposition politicians, election
interference and cyberattacks.
source link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/digital-currencies-won-t-impact-us-sanctions-treasury-exec-says
