The Bank of Russia — the same institution that wanted to ban stablecoins — is now studying how to create one.
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First Deputy Chairman Vladimir Chistyukhin confirmed that Russia's central bank will conduct a feasibility study this year on launching a Russian stablecoin. If that's not a white flag to decentralized finance, I don't know what is.
This reversal didn't happen in a vacuum. According to reports, the shift comes amid mounting pressure from both the US and EU, whose own stablecoin frameworks — and the dollar-denominated stablecoins already dominating global flows — are making it impossible for Russia to sit on the sidelines.
When your geopolitical rivals are weaponizing financial infrastructure, you either build your own rails or get left behind.
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The Real Story: Competition Is the Point
Here's what matters for anyone who cares about financial freedom: every government that launches a stablecoin validates the technology that permissionless stablecoins pioneered. Russia isn't innovating here — it's reacting.
The market for borderless, programmable money already exists. USDT and USDC move hundreds of billions monthly without asking anyone's permission. Now states are scrambling to compete.
And competition is exactly what individuals need. A world with Russian stablecoins, US-regulated stablecoins, euro-backed stablecoins, and decentralized alternatives like DAI or LUSD is a world where no single entity controls the monetary layer.
That's a massive upgrade from the current system where your bank can freeze your account because a bureaucrat had a bad Monday.
Meanwhile, RLUSD Is Quietly Proving the Model
While governments debate, the market keeps building. Ripple's RLUSD is offering an interesting case study in what stablecoin maturity actually looks like.
Onchain throughput analysis — transaction volumes, unique addresses, settlement frequency — suggests RLUSD is moving beyond speculative trading into functional adoption: real payments, real settlement, real utility.
This distinction matters enormously. A stablecoin that only moves between exchanges is a trading tool. A stablecoin with growing onchain throughput across diverse use cases is infrastructure. The difference between the two is the difference between a casino chip and a currency.
When central banks start copying your homework, you know the thesis is right. Permissionless money forced this conversation — and now governments have to compete on merit, not mandate.
What to Watch
Russia's feasibility study timeline — will it produce a CBDC-style surveillance coin or something closer to a market-competitive stablecoin? The design choices will tell you everything about intent.
RLUSD on-chain metrics — sustained throughput growth with diversifying use cases signals genuine product-market fit, not hype cycles.
The regulatory arbitrage game — as more nations launch stablecoins, users will migrate to whichever offers the best combination of stability, privacy, and interoperability. Permissionless options have a structural advantage here.
The optimistic read — and I think it's the correct one — is that we're entering a multi-stablecoin world where state-backed and decentralized options coexist and compete. Governments will try to surveil and control their versions.
Users will have alternatives. That's not a bug in the system; that's the entire point of building on open protocols.
Russia didn't wake up one morning and decide stablecoins were cool. Decentralized money made the old playbook obsolete. The only question left is whether governments compete fairly — or try to ban what they can't control.
History suggests they'll attempt both. Crypto was built for exactly that scenario.
