A senior Russian finance ministry official said Wednesday, the country should be developing its own stablecoin, as per a Reuters report. Osman Kabaloev is the deputy director of Russia’s finance ministry’s financial policy department.
Kabaloev’s comments came after the U.S. slapped sanctions on the Russian-linked crypto exchange Garantex, which revealed on March 6 that Tether froze digital wallets holding around $30 million of USDT. The exchange has halted all withdrawals. This temporary pause poses issues for Russian businesses that commonly use USDT in their transactions, as Western sanctions restrict Russia’s reach in global payments.
“The event has certainly forced a re-evaluation of the country’s dependence on third-party stablecoin infrastructure,” said Osman Kabaloev.
Garantex is a crypto exchange that was created in 2019 by co-founders Stanislav Drugalev, Sergey Mendeleev, and Aleksandr Mira Serda.
The U.S. investigation into Garantex goes back to 2022, when the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control hit the exchange with sanctions in April.