Despite widespread opposition to the digital ruble from across Russia’s political spectrum, the Bank of Russia and its media cheerleaders claim that the traceable, programmable, centralized digital token will help bypass sanctions and fight corruption through greater financial transparency.
However, Moscow already has an alternative to SWIFT that can be used to circumvent sanctions, and the Bank of Russia already has the ability to monitor all money transfers in the country.
On Russian Telegram channels, reactions to Putin’s call for the “full-scale implementation” of the digital ruble were mostly negative.
The good news is that the Russian government might be too incompetent to fulfill Putin’s dream of a CBDC paradise.
“Considering the fantastic ability of the Russian authorities to fail any projects, skepticism about [the widescale adoption of the digital ruble] does not dissipate,” Russian commentator Anatoly Nesmiyan observed.
