How can Russia and other countries avoid Western sanctions after the passage of the US stablecoin bill? Ethereum to ETH conversion can also be regulated 👇 Jian Ge put forward an interesting viewpoint, that is, according to the rules of the stablecoin bill, all stablecoins need to have blacklist freezing qualifications, decentralized stablecoins and stablecoins will have little room for survival, and because stablecoins are regulated by the United States, Sun Ge has also defected. Therefore, it will become increasingly difficult for countries like Russia to use stablecoins such as USDC and USDT for trade, as they are easily frozen and sanctioned by the United States. Bitcoin is also becoming increasingly expensive and scarce, and Ethereum may take over this traffic and become the world's largest settlement network for gray and black underground banks. This is because Ethereum is decentralized, anti censorship, and has ETH and DAI. So spinach, who has a basic understanding of Russia's underground trade and the adoption of cryptocurrencies, also wants to make a comprehensive analysis of this viewpoint, propose some brainstorming and things I know, and supplement Jian Ge's point of view. Let me first throw a few tricks: -Russia has established a blockchain settlement network among its allies through China -Ethereum can be reviewed, and ETH may not be able to be transferred. We need to start from the node side (implementation plan needs to be discussed and verified together) Question 1: After stablecoins are regulated, do Russia have any other options? Assuming that after the stablecoin bill is passed, all addresses in Russia are highly monitored, and stablecoin companies can freeze them at any time, and even Sun Ge's Tron cannot be used, Bitcoin is also inconvenient. Can Russia still use cryptocurrency for trade? First of all, there are risks and the scale cannot be too large. In fact, Russia's trade has been settled in stable currency for several years. It can even realize the settlement of imports from Chinese Mainland in French currency. The general method is to receive U through the trade entrepot company of HK or SG and legally exchange it into French currency to return to China for foreign exchange settlement. And the source of these U's is usually some legitimate trading companies in small Southeast Asian countries, but in fact, the person behind them is Russia. However, after purchasing goods through some shells and transporting them to small countries, they will appear in Russia after a period of time. This method can create a barrier effect between cash flow and information flow, and the final result is that domestic companies exporting to Hong Kong and Hong Kong exporting to small Southeast Asian countries are not related to each other. But if this method is discovered, freezing it would also result in significant losses. Russia itself understands this, so they have been developing their own decentralized settlement network. This settlement system was officially unveiled last year and is called Brics Pay. As for who provided the technology behind it, there are many stories, and I am not convenient to say here. Everyone understands it. This is a blockchain network jointly established by the BRICS countries, with core member countries including Russia, India, Iran, China, the Middle East, and other countries. Essentially, it is an alliance chain, but due to the nodes being composed of different countries, the degree of decentralization is also very high (the difficulty of countries colluding to tamper with the ledger is high). They can already completely bypass the SWIFT system and stablecoin company sanctions on this Brics Pay chain, but the disadvantage is that they cannot use US dollars. Question 2: Is it possible for Russia to be sanctioned for converting Ethereum to ETH? My viewpoint is that there are decentralized stablecoins, such as DAI. We know that the issuer of DAI, MakerDAO, has changed its name to SKY and the official announcement will join the blacklist freezing mechanism. This means that DAI's strategic direction has moved towards regulatory compliance, and there is also a risk of being frozen when Russia uses DAI. What about ETH? ETH doesn't have smart contracts, so there's no way to freeze Russian ETH, right? That's right, ETH is a native token, and unless you can prevent Ethereum from operating, you cannot prevent an address from transferring ETH. So, is there any way for the United States to prevent Ethereum from operating? The answer is yes. Spinach studied the POS mechanism of Ethereum in 2023 and envisioned a solution to block sanctioned addresses by exerting pressure on nodes. How can it be implemented? Firstly, we know that Ethereum's POS mechanism involves pledging to become a node. Once you become a node, you can vote on the block. Unlike POW, which requires 51% consensus, the POS mechanism requires more than 66% of the total pledged nodes to vote in order to release the block. In order to prevent nodes from tampering with data and committing crimes, Ethereum has also set up some confiscation mechanisms, up to a maximum of all your pledges. However, this confiscation mechanism is only for tampering with data, not refusing to release the block. Nodes have the right to vote NO. Under this mechanism, what means can the United States use to sanction Russia? Firstly, if the United States is really determined not to allow Russia to trade through ETH, what it can do is to notify all Ethereum node operators of which addresses belong to Russia. After you see this address and submit the transaction, all of you will vote to reject it. Otherwise, I will have to trouble you. In this situation, if you tell me that you are a node operator, what would you do? It should be noted that the vast majority of Ethereum nodes are actually operated by Amazon Web Services and various hosting service providers, rather than being deployed one computer at a time around the world. Therefore, refusing to block is not considered malicious, and nodes may repeatedly refuse Russian addresses to submit transactions under the threat of the United States. In this way, although Russian ETH will not be frozen, it may never be transferred out... summarize Although Russia can avoid dependence on other public chains through Brics Pay, the downside is that it cannot use stablecoins denominated in US dollars. If Russia conducts trade through ETH, the United States may impose sanctions on Russian addresses through the node end, leading to Ethereum refusing to block. However, as the research on spinach is scheduled for 2023, Ethereum may have undergone many technological upgrades during this period. This idea is also a starting point for further discussion. Tech experts can express their views on whether the United States can sanction Russia's use of ETH by pressuring nodes to refuse to vote on blocks containing Russian addresses? And what other good ways do you think Russia can bypass regulation after the stablecoin bill is passed? (The viewpoint may be incorrect. If there are any mistakes, please feel free to discuss them in a friendly manner!)