Good morning, and welcome to Protocol Fintech. This Friday: the globally chaotic state of crypto regulation, the great roller derby NFT squabble, and arrests in the year’s biggest rug pull.
Off the chain
Could a sanctioned Russia get paid in bitcoin for its oil and gas? A Russian parliamentarian, Pavel Zavalny, proposed that Thursday. It seems theoretically possible, when you consider that the bitcoin network processed $3 trillion in transactions last year, according to NYDIG. Russia’s central bank reported the country had around $240 billion in oil exports in 2021, so it wouldn’t necessarily swamp bitcoin capacity. The main hitch: Customers for Russian energy have contracts that spell out payment in dollars or euros, and insisting on different forms of payment would breach those. Once again, crypto turns out not to be a magic wand you can wave over thorny financial problems.
— Owen Thomas (email | twitter)
There are no rules about crypto rules
As the EU debates a key bill and Washington figures out how to implement Biden’s executive order on digital assets, crypto regulation seems to be playing a larger role in the policy agenda every day. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made a number of previously abstract concerns about crypto suddenly concrete. It’s not just the big Western economies that are struggling with figuring out crypto regulation, though: Crypto rules are getting thrashed out in capitals globally,…
