Russian officials are developing a cryptocurrency intended to help the country evade international financial sanctions, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has commissioned government agencies to work on a “cryptorouble,” the FT reported, citing Moscow officials.
A reluctant Russia is expected to agree with OPEC and other producers to continue to curb global oil production, but the deal may have more caveats than initially expected by the market.
The somewhat rocky road to reaching an agreement by Thursday’s OPEC meeting has also exposed some cracks in the new world order of oil – where Saudi Arabia and Russia use their combined heft to influence prices and global supply. The cause of those "cracks" in the new ‘R-OPEC’ appears to be U.S. shale oil.
Russia is ready to discuss an extension of a global deal between OPEC and other countries to cut oil output in Vienna on November 30, TASS news agency quoted the Energy Minister Alexander Novak as saying on Friday. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and several other major producers cut their combined output by about 1.8 million barrels per day since January to reduce bloated inventories and boost oil prices.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Burger King is petitioning the Russian government’s Federal Anti-Monopoly Service to ban It from showing in theaters because they argue that the Stephen King reboot could potentially hurt its business.
Apparently, Burger King is afraid that audiences will watch an evil clown terrorize a bunch of children for two hours and get inspired to give their business to another similarly red-haired clown. It’s basically the opposite argument that all those hardworking clowns made when they feared that IT would wreck their birthday party business, but whatever.
Responding to President Vladimir Putin’s recent comments on artificial intelligence, Space X and Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Monday that World War III would likely be triggered by competition for AI.
The business magnate’s prediction came in response to Putin’s comments at a meeting with schoolchildren in Yaroslavl on September 1, in which the Russian president said it was important to prevent monopolies in the field, adding that if Russia became the global leader in artificial intelligence, “it will share its technology with the rest of the world, like we are doing now with atomic and nuclear technology.”
The wealth held offshore by wealthy Russians was equivalent to 75 percent of the country’s national income by 2015, a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) claims.
The NBER study, authored by prominent economists including Thomas Piketty, maps the distribution of income and wealth in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.
A central bank rescue of Russian bank Otkritie has eased market concerns that other banks could be in trouble, prompting banking stocks to reverse three days of losses. Russia’s central bank stepped in on Tuesday to take at least a 75 per cent stake in Otkritie, the country’s biggest privately-owned bank, to plug a hole in its balance sheet.
The bailout highlights problems among Russia’s banks and the challenge the authorities face in trying to clean up the sector.
An advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to raise as much as $100 million in an initial coin offering (ICO). The funding effort for the "Russian Mining Company" was revealed this week by Dmitry Marinichev, who serves as the internet ombudsman to Putin’s office.
According to a presentation published in tandem with the unveiling, the team behind the effort is planning to tap as much as 20 megawatts to power their mining farm, using chips developed domestically. Bitcoin mining is an energy intensive process by which new transactions are added to the blockchain, creating new tokens – 12.5 BTC, or roughly $42,000 at current prices – as a reward for the miner.
