Business Desk 
Mar 16, 2025
Russia is using cryptocurrency to facilitate its oil trade with China and India, allowing it to bypass Western sanctions, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. While Moscow has publicly backed digital currency for international trade and passed a law last year permitting such transactions, its use in oil deals has remained undisclosed until now.
Reportedly, Russia has established various payment systems, among which USDT (Tether) is one of the most popular. In a standard transaction, the yuan is paid by a Chinese purchaser to a middleman, who then exchanges it for cryptocurrency.
This digital money is then sent between many accounts before ultimately being changed into Russian roubles. A single oil trader is said to have tens of millions of dollars in monthly trades with this practice.
Even with the growing use of cryptocurrency in Russian oil transactions, old currencies such as the UAE dirham remain dominant, analysts added. The Russian central bank has not issued a statement but earlier admitted that payment delays because of sanctions have posed serious economic challenges.
