Hello, I'm Tamerson Ford. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.

Financial sanctions are quickly beginning to flatten Russia's economy. But so far, there's no mention

of a blanket ban on cryptocurrencies. If I would be asked, I would advise actually

temporary stop serving any address that has some

relations with Russia. Big crypto exchanges say they're already complying with existing sanctions

and a complete ban would simply hurt the ordinary Russian. I think there should be a

distinction made between Russians who are on the

sanctions list and the government being on the sanctions list versus individual Russians who

basically have no other means of payment or receipt of funds. In today's Business Daily from the BBC,

we find out how cryptocurrency, for the first time ever, is playing a role in war.

We commit to ensuring that a certain number of Russian banks are removed from SWIFT.

This will ensure that these banks are disconnected from the international

financial system and harm their ability to operate globally.

We've now sanctioned Russian banks that together hold around $1 trillion in assets.

We've cut off Russia's largest bank, a bank that holds more than one third of Russia's banking assets by itself.

The world has imposed unprecedented financial sanctions on Russia, flattening its financial system,

destroying the ruble and forcing the country to the brink of default.

But so far, there is no blanket ban on Russia using cryptocurrency.

As of February 1st, you know, the Kremlin actually and the Russian government, they estimated

that Russians own more than 12.5 trillion rubles, which is 214 billion worth of crypto.

Gabby Hoey is from Merkel Science, a blockchain analytics and intelligence company that provides

data on cryptocurrencies. So just to give you an idea of the size of this figure, this figure

...