Saturday, March 05, 2022

Coinbase Should Stay Put And Rescue Russia

Coinbase
Ukraine Is Putin's Brexit With Too Many Dead Bodies
March 4: Ukraine
Twitter: March 2: Ukraine
Kharkiv
Putin Wants To Do A Syria In Ukraine And Can Not Be Allowed
YouTube: February 28
The End Of The Road For Putin
February 28: Ukraine
Legitimate Russian Grievances
I Am No American Mouthpiece On Ukraine
YouTube: February 27
Human Warfare Is People Coming Out Into The Streets Of Moscow In Large Numbers
February 27: Ukraine
Madman Putin And The Nuclear Sword: The Putin Regime Must Collapse
February 26: Ukraine, Justice Jackson
Hybrid Warfare, Meet Human Warfare
The Endgame In Russia
Putin Is Saddam With The WMDs
News: February 22: Ukraine

Putin has gone all in. He has gone medieval. And the thought was wars have gone out of fashion in Europe.

Wars are tragic. Even just wars are tragic. There is damage to limbs, life, property.

I think Putin is going to lose. That is for sure. What is less certain is how soon that will happen. It could be painfully long.

Putin's move feels irrational. I think this is the end of the Putin regime. It has lasted over 20 years. That is long enough.

Ukraine was the mini Russia. There was corruption, but it was still a democracy. It was building a market economy. Singapore was the mini China. Deng Xiaoping had the humility to learn. Putin's hubris has beem to bomb.

The Soviet Communist Party vacated the scene. Now it is the KGB's turn to go.

I think the number is 500,000. If half a million Russians were to brave the streets of Moscow, Putin is over.

A democratic Russia should collaborate with the US to cut nuclear weapons by more than 90% by the end of the decade.

Russia is a major power. It will be a major power. But the currency for power these days is how your economy is doing. Russia naturally will have a sphere of influence; every large country does. But that influence respects the sovereignty of the small countries in the neighborhood. Trade, not war.

Putin is not fighting the US. Putin is fighting China. Putin wants China to think it is Russia that is the number two country. That has not been true for decades. It is now China that competes. And China competes primarily economically.

A debate has flared up. What should crypto companies do? Several arguments can be made both ways. But I think one big argument for staying put is that if ordinary Russians can upload their assets on to the blockchain, they can vote with their feet. Or even if they stay, as most will, the Russian rouble weakened will politically weaken Putin.

And there is also the aftermath. The post-Putin scenario also has to be worked out. The last time around the West did not do a good job of helping Russia transition. The price for that is being paid three decades later.

YouTube: February 19
New York Times: February 16: Hong Kong, Omicron, Trump, Bhutan
February 12: Russia, Ukraine, Lead
If Russia Invades Ukraine, Questions Arise Over Taiwan





Crypto Is Helping Both Sides in Ukraine Conflict, But It Won’t Wreck Russian Sanctions . Several days after the Russian invasion, Mykhailo Fedorov, vice prime minister of Ukraine and minister of digital transformation, called on people around the world to show solidarity with Ukraine by making crypto donations. ........ At the time of writing, donations have exceeded $50 million. ...... It shows individuals collectively having a state-like impact on the global stage. ....... This new way of accessing global private capital is a refreshingly welcome facet of cryptocurrencies. By going straight to the people of the world, Ukraine’s government has been able to raise finance quickly without the need for financial intermediaries. ......... They also have the potential to help Russians to evade the crashing rouble ........ One leading Twitter user, David Gokhshtein, replied that he is “definitely with Ukraine and for peace but we don’t do that in crypto.” .......... Changpeng Zhao, founder of leading exchange Binance, has said that it’s not the place of crypto exchanges to restrict Russian activities in general, though he emphasized that his exchange was not permitting any of the hundreds of wealthy Russian individuals on western sanctions lists to use its services. Even then, he said, it was impossible to stop them because there were so many other exchanges that they could use instead. ........ Russian demand for crypto may help to explain rising crypto prices early last week too. ....... Countries such as Iran have previously been accused of using bitcoin to bypass sanctions. Nonetheless, as the global community looks ever more fractured by ideology and past grievances, concerns about Russia are of a different order. .......... In my view, however, it is doubtful that crypto will save Russia from sanctions. Even apart from the huge task of establishing the necessary facilities within Russian banks, many of the people and institutions that would be receiving the crypto would need to set up wallets of their own. Besides that, daily transaction values in crypto only amount to a few billion dollars. This is a big number, but an order of magnitude less than the overall financial system. If Russia were to seriously start using crypto for payments, the market is not yet mature enough to cope. .......... thanks to the devaluation of the rouble, bitcoin has now eclipsed it in overall value.

It is now the 14th most valuable currency in the world, three places above the rouble.

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