The impact of the West’s sanctions just seems to be getting worse and worse for Russia.
Now, 98% of Chinese banks — even small regional ones — are refusing to accept direct Chinese payment transfers from Russia, Alexey Razumovsky, the commercial director of the payments company Impaya Rus, told the pro-Kremlin media outlet Izvestia.
Such issues appear to have intensified over the past three weeks, as smaller Chinese financial companies were still processing Russian payments in May and June, Izvestia reported.
Last month, the Russian outlet Kommersant reported that about 80% of bank transfers made in the Chinese yuan were bouncing back with no explanation after being stalled for weeks while banks decided whether they could transact.
Razumovsky told Izvestia the payment challenges with Chinese banks could contribute to supply-chain difficulties and inflation in Russia.
Bitcoin has a marked capitalization of about 30 billion USD. A S-400 air defense system costs 1.2 billion USD. So you could trade 25 of those systems using the entire “supply” of bitcoin. Russia calimed to have about 450 of these systems before the war. Even if they would use bitcoin for trading military equipment, cryptocurrency simply does not have the volume to pay for a meaningful amount of equipment.