Author: Anita; Source: X, @Anitahityou
Moscow mornings always come slowly in winter.
The subway glides from the gray residential areas into the city center. As usual, the advertising screens in the carriages scroll through ruble loans, online shopping promotions, and a seemingly normal banner:
“Overseas income settlement? USDT is also acceptable.”
It's hard to imagine that in a country besieged by the Western financial system, "stablecoins," a term that originally only appeared in Silicon Valley white papers, have quietly become a real infrastructure relied upon by ordinary people and businesses.
Alexei (pseudonym), 34 years old, claims to be an "IT consultant," but his true identity is a small node in a stablecoin black market chain in Moscow.
Alexei (pseudonym), 34 years old, claims to be an "IT consultant," but his true identity is a small node in a stablecoin black market chain in Moscow.
At nine o'clock in the morning, his work began with checking Telegram channels. On his phone, there were four or five groups: "Moscow USDT Insider Price," "Freelancer Settlement Channel," and "Ruble Cash Exchange/Card Transfer - For Acquaintances Only." Each group had bots offering prices—"Buy USDT 76.3, Sell 77.1." Deeper in, there were dozens of private chat windows. Some were young people doing outsourced development, needing to exchange US dollars transferred from clients' cards for USDT, then for rubles; some were small companies importing small parts, needing to pay Turkish suppliers with USDT; and there were unfamiliar numbers with accents, simply saying, "Large amount, meet offline." Alexei's profit model was simple: earn a small profit from the price difference on small transactions, or take a few thousandths of a "handling fee" on large orders, all while being linked to larger exchange brokers or exchanges. On the surface, all of this appears to be just "currency exchange," but the funds will soon flow into deeper undercurrents. Some deposit USDT into local exchanges with Russian-language interfaces, then exchange it for Bitcoin and transfer it away; others use Russian-backed platforms like Garantex to launder funds into offshore accounts; still others use it to provide liquidity for companies in Georgia and the UAE. At night, he divides the USDT he earned that day into two parts: one part is sold for rubles to pay his mortgage and buy groceries; the other part lies quietly in a multi-signature wallet, perhaps as a last resort for his family should the situation change again.
On the statistics table, he is just a small point in the "Russian retail crypto inflow." But the line connecting all these points is the unseen market.
I. After being cut off, new blood vessels grew underground
Russia's crypto story didn't begin after the sanctions.
In 2020, Eastern Europe was already one of the regions with the highest volume of crime-related crypto transactions globally. Chainalysis research shows that the dark web received a record $1.7 billion in cryptocurrency that year, most of which flowed to one name: Hydra. Hydra was by far the world's largest dark web marketplace, at its peak accounting for 75% of the global dark web market's revenue.
Before being shut down by German police in April 2022, it was actually a massive "dark economy hub"—drugs, fake documents, money laundering services, biometrics, all "transactions not recognized by the official world" were settled in stablecoins.
Hydra's collapse didn't eliminate the chain; it merely dispersed its shadow: its users, infrastructure, and intermediary network later reassembled among Garantex, Telegram OTC, and smaller exchanges. The dark side of Russia's crypto economy didn't emerge after sanctions; it has deep historical roots. Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022 and the subsequent escalation of sanctions, Russia has been encircled in the traditional financial world: its foreign exchange reserves were frozen, major banks were excluded from SWIFT, and Visa and Mastercard withdrew en masse. For a country whose lifeblood is energy and commodity exports, this is practically tantamount to having its throat twisted. But the on-chain numbers tell a different story: According to Chainalysis's statistics on European crypto activity from July 2024 to June 2025, Russia received $376.3 billion worth of crypto assets during this period, ranking first in Europe and far exceeding the UK's $273.2 billion. Russia is no longer an invisible player in Bitcoin mining either. The latest estimates from the hashrate data platform Hashrate Index show that by the end of 2024, Russia accounted for approximately 16% of global Bitcoin hashrate—second only to the United States. These two figures, though cold and hard, are enough to illustrate that while the world tries to drive Russia out of the traditional financial system, a new, underground crypto economy is rapidly growing. If OTC vendors like Alexei are the capillaries, then local exchanges like Garantex are the heart of the black market. Garantex was originally registered in Estonia, but its core business has always been in Moscow. Starting in 2022, it was successively added to the sanctions lists of the US Treasury Department and the EU, accused of facilitating ransomware, dark web transactions, and sanctioned banks. Logically, such a platform should have been defunct long ago. However, a report released in September 2025 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revealed that despite multiple blows, Garantex actually "continued to operate in the shadows," providing cryptocurrency exchange and transfer services to customers in Russia and the surrounding region through a series of offshore companies, mirror sites, and proxy accounts. Even more glaringly, an in-depth report from on-chain analytics firm TRM Labs points out that in 2025, Garantex and the Iranian exchange Nobitex together contributed over 85% of the crypto funds flowing into sanctioned entities and jurisdictions. In March 2025, Tether froze approximately $280,000 (about 2.5 billion rubles) worth of USDT wallets associated with Garantex, forcing the exchange to suspend operations. But a few months later, the US Treasury Department sanctioned a new name: Grinex—"a cryptocurrency exchange created by Garantex employees to assist in circumventing sanctions." The black heart, punched hard, beats again in a new form. II. A7A5: The Ambition and Paradox of "Ruble on the Blockchain" USDT is currently the main player in Russia's shadow economy, but in the eyes of Moscow officials, it also has a fatal problem—it's too "American" and too "centralized." In 2025, a new piece was quietly put on the table: A7A5, a stablecoin issued by a Kyrgyz platform, touted as "ruble-pegged." A Financial Times investigation revealed that A7A5 completed transactions equivalent to approximately $6-8 billion within four months, mostly occurring on weekdays and concentrated during Moscow trading hours, with the custodian bank being Promsvyazbank, a Russian defense bank under sanctions. The EU and UK sanctions documents bluntly describe it as a "tool for Russia to circumvent sanctions." By October 2025, the EU officially added A7A5 to its sanctions list, and on-chain analytics firms also pointed out its close coupling with Garantex and Grinex—becoming a new central node in Russia's crypto clearing network. A7A5's role is subtle: For Russian companies, it is a "ruble stablecoin that can bypass the risks of USDT"; For regulators, it is an "invisible tool for putting the ruble on the blockchain and incidentally bypassing bank scrutiny." Behind this lies an increasingly clear Russian idea: "Since we can't live without stablecoins, at least a portion of them must be printed by ourselves." The paradox lies in the fact that any stablecoin aiming for global reach must rely on infrastructure beyond Russia's control: public blockchains, cross-border nodes, overseas exchanges, and third-country financial systems. A7A5 aspires to be a "sovereign stablecoin," yet it must circulate in a world not under Russian control. This is a microcosm of Russia's entire crypto strategy—it wants to break free from Western finance, yet it must continue using the "on-chain financial building blocks" constructed by the West. III. What does crypto mean for Russia? Not the future, but the present. The Western world often views encryption as an asset, a technology, or even a culture. But in Russia, it plays a completely different role: 1. For businesses: Encryption is a backup channel for trade settlement. Many of Russia's imported high-tech parts, drone components, industrial instruments, and even consumer goods cannot be paid for through traditional banking systems. This has created a clandestine but stable route: Russian companies export to the Middle East/Central Asia, intermediaries then circulate the currency through USDT/USDC to suppliers, and finally return to Moscow for OTC exchange in rubles. It's not sophisticated, not romantic, not "decentralized," but it's usable, dynamic, and vibrant. Encryption here is not a dream; it's the least efficient but only dynamic form of realism. 2. For young people, crypto is an escape from their local currency. The Russian banking system has long suffered from a lack of trust, and the ruble's fragility over the years has made crypto a natural safe haven for the middle class and young engineers. Ask any software engineer in Moscow, and they might not tell you "I trade crypto," but rather, "I convert my salary into USDT and put it with a trusted OTC team on Telegram. The bank freezes my card, but the blockchain won't freeze me." This statement is a microcosm of contemporary Russia. 3. For the nation, crypto and mining are "digital energy exports." Russia possesses one of the world's cheapest electricity sources—Siberian hydroelectric and natural gas surplus power has become a haven for Bitcoin mining. Mining provides: an "export product" bypassing the banking system, a globally exchangeable digital commodity, and a way to circumvent financial blockades. The Russian Ministry of Finance has repeatedly acknowledged that "mining revenue is a necessary component of the national trade system." This is no longer a private activity, but a quasi-national economic sector. 4. Regarding the gray market: Encryption as an invisible lubricant. This part is difficult to quantify, but existing facts include European intelligence agencies pointing to Russian intelligence agencies using encryption for information warfare, hacker payments, large-scale underground funds flowing between Europe and Russia via stablecoins, and various smuggling networks highly relying on on-chain funds. IV. Is Russia a "crypto superpower"? The answer is more complex than you think. If you measure it by technological innovation, no. If you look at it by VC projects and DeFi, no. If you measure it by mining, on-chain transaction volume, stablecoin inflows, and trade settlement reliance, it is a crypto power center that the world cannot ignore. It didn't "voluntarily become" it; it was "pushed into becoming" it by the world.
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