Russian Oil Firms Turn to Cryptocurrency for Trade with China and India

Russian oil companies are employing cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the stablecoin USDT, for transactions in oil exports to China and India to circumvent Western sanctions. This is reported by Reuters, citing its own sources.

Digital assets simplify the conversion of Chinese yuan and Indian rupees into Russian rubles. Sources note that while the share of crypto payments in Russia’s overall oil trade structure remains small, it is gradually increasing.

According to the International Energy Agency, Russia’s oil export volume in 2024 amounted to $192 billion.

Russia employs various mechanisms to sustain trade, with transactions in Tether being just one of them, a source told the agency. He also emphasized that digital assets make financial operations faster and more convenient.

The payment schemes involve intermediary companies where Chinese oil buyers transfer payments in yuan. The currency is then converted into cryptocurrencies, sent to other accounts, and converted into rubles. Individual deals by one of the Russian oil traders in China include cryptocurrency transactions amounting to tens of millions of dollars monthly.

Traditional currencies like the UAE dirham continue to play a primary role in oil payments, but cryptocurrency has become an important tool for bypassing sanction restrictions, insiders concluded.

Earlier in March, Deputy Anton Gorelkin commented on the blocking of wallets of the Russian exchange Garantex by Tether, stating that cryptocurrencies will continue to be used as one of the tools to circumvent sanctions.