VISA & MASTERCARD blocked Russians from accessing their money

[zeroday]

More details is here
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=525168.0


I think it's good time to educate russians about the benefits of bitcoin.

I'm calling all russian speaking to start massive campaing promoting bitcoin in comments and discussions of relevant articles in russian press. May be their dumb authorities will finally realize that bitcoin is their friend.

[DeeSome]

One word.

BASTARDS

[kolev]

More details is here
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=525168.0


I think it's good time to educate russians about the benefits of bitcoin.

I'm calling all russian speaking to start massive campaing promoting bitcoin in comments and discussions of relevant articles in russian press. May be their dumb authorities will finally realize that bitcoin is their friend.

It's obvious that you don't understand how credit cards work. No, they didn't block heir bank accounts, they just cannot spend them using heir debit/credit cards. This hurts American and European businesses more than Russia and the Russians! Stupid Obama! Worst president ever!

[TTM]

Just few banks was banned from using Visa and MC, not whole Russia. Even if all Russian bank got the ban hammer, they will never turn to Bitcoin. Russia government doesn't like things they cannot control, so it is silly to say that they will love cryptocurrency because of this event. China has decent success with their own bankcard brand - UnionPay, Russia will learn that lesson and try to do the same. Furthermore, Russian already have few good payment systems: WebMoney, YandexMoney ...

[franky1]

More details is here
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=525168.0


I think it's good time to educate russians about the benefits of bitcoin.

I'm calling all russian speaking to start massive campaing promoting bitcoin in comments and discussions of relevant articles in russian press. May be their dumb authorities will finally realize that bitcoin is their friend.

OP please dont chinese whisper something,. (a link that leads to another link, that leads to a news media story, which has not fully quoted or shown the original source document/interview to verify)

again stop causing chinese whispers.

now to correct you. russian people can still go to their bank or to an ATM and get their money out. the only thing that has changed is that mastercard do not process transactions on retail outlets.

The bank added that its own services relating to Visa and Mastercard cards, like withdrawing cash from the bank’s ATMs works fine.

so at worse instead of handing a card over to a retail cashier the people of russia have to go to an ATM and buy stff the old way ( paper money ) until the banks issue new cards with a new processor.

so your title should read mastercard/visa have stopped processing transactions for customers in russia.

i am just thankful you are requesting others to educate, and not endorsing yourself as an educator

[mecoin]

LOOOOLLLL
thanks for sharing!
another good reason for using bitcoins!

honestly this hole krim-thing is totally stupid!

[S4VV4S]

I think Obama should be careful on his moves because this will probably lead to all Russians selling their many billions of dollars.
And something tells me China will follow.

Bye bye U.S. Dollar  

EDIT: Then again maybe that's his plan to start WW3

[franky1]

the bigger news still to come is pick pocketting, handbag thieves and 'stick ups' because everyone has to start carrying around lots of bank notes now instead of a card protected by a pin number

[amspir]

I think Obama should be careful on his moves because this will probably lead to all Russians selling their many billions of dollars.
And something tells me China will follow.

There's not much economic leverage over Russia by the USA because Russia imports nearly nothing from the USA.   However, the rest of Europe is dependent on Russian natural gas, and means to ship natural gas from the USA to Europe in significant quantities are years away.  The USA is war-weary, and can't make a credible military threat.  

The only tools that Obama has left to deal with the Russians are token economic sanctions.  If the issue isn't solved by next winter, I predict Europe will capitulate to Putin when it starts getting cold.

Bitcoin isn't big enough for Russian oligarchs to use to get around the sanctions.   However, it shows that VISA/Mastercard will use politics to determine the validity of transactions going through its system.   Banning Wikileaks donations was just the beginning.

[zeroday]

Just few banks was banned from using Visa and MC, not whole Russia. Even if all Russian bank got the ban hammer, they will never turn to Bitcoin. Russia government doesn't like things they cannot control, so it is silly to say that they will love cryptocurrency because of this event. China has decent success with their own bankcard brand - UnionPay, Russia will learn that lesson and try to do the same. Furthermore, Russian already have few good payment systems: WebMoney, YandexMoney ...

TTM, you don't see the point.
Unlike Chinese, the Russians have had freedom to spend money abroad, till now.
I suppose that russian payment systems are worthless outside of russia and people are getting isolated from the outer world.

May be this move is even good for Russian govt as it would force their citizens to spend all the money inside the country. But people will just lose the crumbles of financial freedom they have.

[Brangdon]

This is why adding the ability to blacklist bitcoins would be a mistake.

[crazynoggin]

We do want governments to accept Bitcoin though, and to have the community actively endorsing Russians to break sanctions imposed by a lot of governments across the world would not help our ultimate goal to get Bitcoin widely adapted. Most people understand Bitcoin can be used just for this, but we as a community should avoid endorsing certain uses for Bitcoin to avoid negative hype.

[Littleshop]

I think Obama should be careful on his moves because this will probably lead to all Russians selling their many billions of dollars.
And something tells me China will follow.

Bye bye U.S. Dollar  

EDIT: Then again maybe that's his plan to start WW3

Russia could not crash the USD even if it tried to.  In fact it looks like Russia has already sold 100 Billion in the last two weeks with little effect.  They don't have much ammo left when it comes to this move.  This will hurt them more then it hurts the USA. 

Obama or Putin could start WW3 easily either openly or secretly.  This is NOT hard to do.  A little mistake with a ship, plane, missile or sub could do it on either side.  Luckily neither of them really want it. 

[Littleshop]

I think Obama should be careful on his moves because this will probably lead to all Russians selling their many billions of dollars.
And something tells me China will follow.

There's not much economic leverage over Russia by the USA because Russia imports nearly nothing from the USA.   However, the rest of Europe is dependent on Russian natural gas, and means to ship natural gas from the USA to Europe in significant quantities are years away.  The USA is war-weary, and can't make a credible military threat.  

Surprisingly the USA could actually get enough natgas to Europe if we wanted to and this would cripple Russia pretty badly.  With one year if we started now we could along with others make up for the Russian natgas by a combination of re-routing, conserving and new capacity. 

France's nuclear plants are looking pretty smart right now. 

[Notanon]

Russia will probably start selling their gas and oil to China instead if the EU impose sanctions on gas supplies, as the Chinese don't seem to be in a particular hurry to introduce sanctions. So if they haven't already, they might start building a couple of pipelines into China near Harbin (one for gas, one for oil) and get their income from that instead. Aside from that, this might force the EU to ramp up energy efficiency measures in its constituent member states to counter a contraction of gas supplies that would result from this, and also increase the price of gas supplies from the North Sea and Norway in turn. The US would be eyeing off possible export deals for their shale gas, and possibly Australia as well if their LNG exports to China and the US decline as a result.

Plenty of ways things could play out, depending on key decisions.

[DynamicDK]

This is why we have Bitcoin!  No one to deny our transactions

[Sat0shiSlot]

VISA & MASTERCARD blocked Russians from accessing their money

As far as I read, living standards are higher in Russia, so it would make sense for the Ukrainans to want to join them. Anyway, maybe a little pain first, but it wouldn't take long until they manage just fine without MasterCard and Visa, along with their fees.

[Rigon]

They are like playing chess. Let see what is the Russia's next move to counter America's sanction.

[ShitHappens]

They are like playing chess. Let see what is the Russia's next move to counter America's sanction.

I wonder what country will make checkmate? who'll be the winner and how much people will suffer from this game?

[predic]

visa and mastercard made problem for wikileaks too. don't use them, they are front business of people who are against bitcoin.