... be created to serve as money without the involvement of governments and banks. Over more than a decade of its existence, the price of Bitcoin has experienced dramatic rises and falls, but the underlying principle of decentralized currency has gained widespread ... ... "cryptocurrency" encompasses a multitude of digital assets with different properties. They can vary in transaction confirmation mechanisms (for instance, Proof-of-Work mining, as with Bitcoin, or Proof-of-Stake staking, as with the new Ethereum), issuance ...

..., as well as spikes in stock prices, including due to gray exports, explained Forbes by Alexey Ivanov, the owner of the commercial vehicle dealership network "Alliance Trax." "Previously, verbal interventions were used instead of this mechanism: government representatives would approach producers, stating the need to influence gasoline prices. But eventually, these measures ceased to be effective," he adds. In gray exports, traders purchase gasoline from the domestic market and send it abroad where prices are higher. To eliminate this scheme, exports were previously only permitted ...

... ceiling has been in place since December 2022. In February 2023, a price cap of $100 per barrel was introduced for light oil products (diesel fuel, gasoline) and $45 per barrel for dark products (fuel oil). It was supposed that the functioning of the mechanism would be evaluated every two months, based on market conditions and that the ceiling would be set at a discount of -5% from the average market price for Russian oil and oil products, calculated based on data from the International Energy Agency. Additionally, after each change in the ceiling price, a transitional period of 90 days was supposed to be in effect before it came into force. However,...

... for oil refining. The losses of oil producers are partly compensated by budget subsidies under the so-called "damper mechanism." By the end of the first ten months of 2024, damper payments increased by 36% to 1.544 trillion rubles, and payments ... ... comparable to the planned budget deficit for 2024, which is 3.3 trillion rubles. However, oil producers still cannot keep gasoline prices in line with inflation, which marks a key difference between the current fuel crisis and last year's. Last year, the trigger ...

... interest in developing new instruments. For example, the Moscow Exchange has launched trading in a futures contract linked to the price of Bitcoin (based on the Bitcoin ETF), while the SPB Exchange is testing derivative instruments on crypto assets. These ... ... risks in working with digital assets diminish. If Russia manages to establish its own cryptocurrency exchange or a similar sales mechanism, qualified investors will be able to trade cryptocurrencies within the ruble jurisdiction. This could attract new capital ...