What I Wish I Knew Before I Got Into Crypto

In 2025, Russia’s economy looks deceptively stable. The ruble trades, banks report profits, and government bonds keep finding buyers. But beneath this façade lies a system that is neither growing nor free. It’s self-financing — a closed loop where the state, banks, and corporations recycle the same rubles to maintain an illusion of stability. That illusion, by most indicators, has less than two years left.

The Closed Loop of Money

With foreign investors long gone and sanctions cutting access to global capital, the Russian government funds itself internally. The Ministry of Finance issues bonds (OFZs), and state-controlled banks such as Sberbank and VTB buy them. The Central Bank of Russia supports this by injecting liquidity — essentially printing new rubles so the banks can purchase even more government debt.

On paper, it looks like financial health. In reality, it’s the state borrowing from itself, with no external inflow of real investment. The same rubles circulate endlessly between ministries and banks, while productive sectors receive little to no funding.

This cycle keeps the system alive but stagnant — a patient on life support, not a recovering one.

Public Distrust and the Flight from Banks

Ordinary Russians are not part of this cycle. The public’s trust in banks has collapsed since 2022. With foreign currencies disappearing from the system, depositors withdrew savings and turned to gold, crypto, or real estate as stores of value.

Foreign-currency deposits have fallen by over 70%. Ruble deposits are short-term, defensive, and frequently moved. The result: banks rely on state liquidity, not on citizens’ savings.

For households, high interest rates — now above 20% — make borrowing nearly impossible. Mortgages have slowed to a crawl, and consumer lending has dropped sharply. Russians don’t invest or borrow — they survive.

Artificial Stability

Russia’s financial model is held together by a simple feedback loop:

Banks buy government bonds. The government spends the money on subsidies, defense, and bureaucracy. The Central Bank injects more liquidity to keep the wheel turning.

It’s a closed economy in the purest sense — no foreign capital, no competitive lending, no market discipline.

This structure creates the appearance of stability because money never leaves the system. But without external growth or internal innovation, it’s just motion without progress — a car running in neutral.

The Turning Point: 12–18 Months Ahead

Economically, a system like this doesn’t explode — it deflates.

The breaking point comes when one of three things happens:

Banks run out of liquidity to keep buying government debt. Inflation erodes confidence in the ruble, and the public abandons the currency entirely. Fiscal pressure — defense spending and subsidies — exceeds what the state can recycle through its own banking system.

When that moment comes, the economy won’t collapse overnight. It will slowly lose functionality — credit will dry up, the ruble will lose real purchasing power, and official reports will drift further from reality.

That slow-motion decay is already visible:

The MOEX stock index is down over 12% year-to-date. Consumer credit approvals have dropped to 20%. Inflation is running higher than official estimates. Economic growth forecasts hover below 1%.

This is not the start of a collapse — it’s the middle of one.

Controlled Stagnation

For now, Russia’s economic managers maintain control through regulation and propaganda. The Central Bank tightens lending rules to avoid a visible crisis, and state media frames stagnation as “resilience.”

But no economy can run on self-recycled liquidity forever.

Without new sources of real capital, Russia faces a countdown — 12 to 18 months before the system reaches a point where even internal recycling won’t cover the state’s obligations. After that, the structure may remain, but the substance — growth, trust, liquidity — will be gone.

In the end, Russia’s economy won’t crash in flames. It will quietly suffocate — a system that funds itself until there’s nothing left to fund.

✍️ CryptoMama | Global Market Psychology & Economic Analysis