Russia approved bitcoin as a form of money in order to hedge against the Russian ruble's depreciation and the Biden sanctions. What are your thoughts?
They were too late in adoption. This will help mitigate effects of sanctions but if they really wanted to be immune from matters related to asset freezes, they should've put their reserve holdings in crypto. Some years ago Russia began dumping USD from their reserves, to the tune of hundreds of billions, but that hasn't done much in saving the ruble because they're still cut off economically.
Crypto isn't the saving grace for Russia. They cannot use Bitcoin to get their way out of this. If they wanted relief, they should've gone down this path years ago.
Russia did not approve of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies as a means of payment. And a few days ago, in the second reading, amendments were made in Russia to the previously adopted law on digital assets, in which citizens were obliged to store cryptocurrency on controlled centralized exchanges or on their wallets, but with the condition of reporting their secret keys to authorized bodies. In view of the lack of control of law enforcement agencies, this will practically mean that citizens were obliged to give their cryptocurrency to officials, because if they use the citizens’ cryptocurrency and declare that they did not do this, or perhaps the wallet was hacked by hackers, none of the ordinary citizens can prove anything to the contrary.
At the same time, the Putin regime may be trying to circumvent sanctions with the help of bitcoin and without a corresponding law.