A Russian legislator has proposed establishing a strategic BTC reserve for the country, which continues to struggle under the weight of thousands of sanctions.
Anton Tkachev, a deputy in Russia’s lower house, the State Duma, urged Finance Minister Anton Siluanov to explore whether the country can hold BTC as a strategic reserve.
“I ask you, dear Anton Germanovich, to assess the feasibility of creating a strategic reserve of BTC in Russia by analogy with state reserves in traditional currencies. If this initiative is approved, I ask you to submit it to the government of the Russian Federation for further implementation,” his proposal stated, as reported by state-owned news agency RIA Novosti.
The proposal by Tkachev, a member of the smaller New People Party, mirrors Donald Trump’s push to establish a new BTC reserve for the United States. Used as an election pledge to woo the ‘crypto’ faithful, the proposal is receiving support from some Republican lawmakers.
They are led by Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), who has pledged to push legislation in Congress within the Trump administration’s first 100 days. She has even suggested selling some of the government’s gold to finance the move, aiming to accumulate 1 million BTC, which would cost nearly $100 billion at current prices.
However, for Russia, BTC represents much more than a speculative asset. Since the Ukraine conflict started, Russia has been slapped with over 16,000 new sanctions, making it the outright leader in sanctions at over 18,700. One of the biggest effects of these sanctions has been the country’s exclusion from the global financial systems, and BTC has represented the Putin administration with a viable workaround.
“In conditions of limited access to traditional international payment systems for countries under sanctions, cryptocurrencies are becoming virtually the only instrument for international trade. The Central Bank of Russia is already preparing to launch an experiment in cross-border settlements in cryptocurrency,” the legislator’s proposal stated.
Tkachev’s proposal comes barely a week after President Putin touted BTC as an uncensorable asset.
“A legitimate question: why accumulate reserves if they can be lost so easily?” the president asked at an investment conference. “For example, bitcoin, who can prohibit it? No one.”
Russia’s proposal puts it on par with nations like El Salvador, which have been accumulating BTC for years, and Brazil and Poland, which have proposed similar moves. With Wall Street-controlled exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and now national strategic reserves, BTC continues to veer further from Satoshi’s vision for Bitcoin: a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash.
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