Reports surfaced this week that Russia plans to load $10 billion worth of bitcoin into its foreign currency reserves early in 2019. Multiple outlets ran the story—The Daily Telegraph, Fortune, ZeroHed
Reports surfaced this week that Russia plans to load $10 billion worth of bitcoin into its foreign currency reserves early in 2019. Multiple outlets ran the story—The Daily Telegraph, Fortune, ZeroHedge among them—all citing Vladislav Ginko, an economics lecturer at Russia's state-backed Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). Ginko proposed the move as a counter to U.S. sanctions, according to his Twitter posts and interviews.
When the claim first appeared, coverage was thin. That shifted as bigger publications picked it up. The story split opinion: some saw it as a hoax, others questioned whether Ginko held the credibility to claim insider knowledge.
Skeptics pointed to the Twitter account itself. Was it even real? A look at the account's timeline suggests it is. A 2012 tweet shows the author identifying as a finance professor working in New York and Moscow. The Wayback Machine confirms Ginko controlled the account by 2014, when he worked with a Russian financial news operation.
Ginko's Twitter feed defies coherence, though. He retweets dental practice photos. He predicted bitcoin would crater below $100 last May, then called for $2 million in 2019. Recent tweets promote conspiracy theories about Bernie Madoff. For someone pitching the Kremlin on bitcoin, this track record is messy.
Russia has been reducing its dollar holdings—that part checks out. When the Telegraph asked the Central Bank about it, the bank said it "publishes information on foreign assets management with a six-month lag," without elaborating. Elina Sidorenko runs a State Duma working group tracking cryptocurrency risks. She offered a direct assessment: "Under this statement there is no common sense, let alone ideas that would be considered in the power circles. Today, the Russian Federation, like any other country in the world, is simply not ready to somehow combine its traditional financial system with cryptocurrencies. And to say that this idea can be implemented in Russia is unlikely to be possible in the next 30 years." She told Forklog, a Russian crypto news outlet.
Sidorenko's statement combined with Ginko's erratic behavior suggests the claim doesn't hold water. Russia adding bitcoin at scale seems off the table.
During reporting, the author discovered Ginko had blocked him on Twitter. The block may have followed a particular tweet. An update: Ginko later unblocked him.
