How Wartime Tests Crypto’s Strengths, Vulnerabilities: QuickTake

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies promise transactions across borders in relative anonymity, mostly free of state oversight and unbothered by the formalities of traditional international banking. In normal times, those attributes inspire talk of privacy, freedom and community. Less clear is how crypto’s anarchic culture works in a time of war. As governments around the world use the global financial system to impose sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, crypto is one potential way for Russia to skirt the consequences. At the same time, digital currencies could have a positive role to play in helping victims of Russia’s aggression. ...