Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that it'due south "even so premature" to utilize cryptocurrencies for settling trades of free energy resource such as oil.

The Russian president discussed potential use cases of cryptocurrencies in a Th CNBC interview following a plenary session of the ​​Russian Energy Week forum.

According to a full interview text published on the Kremlin's official website, Putin said that private cryptocurrencies "can human activity equally a unit of account," but they are "very unstable."

"Cryptocurrency oil contracts? It's too early on to talk nearly it. Information technology works for transferring funds from one place to another, but in terms of trading, specially when it comes to energy resources, it is still premature in my opinion," the president stated.

Putin went on to say that "everything evolves" and "has the correct to be," adding that the Russian government is closely monitoring the cryptocurrency market. He also did not exclude the possibility that at some signal cryptocurrencies will become a "means of accumulation." "Nosotros see how this market fluctuates. It's a scrap early on today," Putin added.

The president said that cryptocurrencies are "not backed by anything however." When asked whether he considers the crypto holdings by Tesla CEO Elon Musk to be "worthless," Putin said no, explaining that he only questioned crypto as a unit of business relationship in the context of energy trading.

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During the interview, the Russian president also claimed that the Usa dollar "undermines its position" equally an international reserve asset. "We aren't interested in cut off dollar payments completely, and we are and so far satisfied with payments for energy resources in dollars, primarily for oil," he added.

The news comes as Russian authorities consider a new law to limit cryptocurrency investments by not-accredited investors. Previously, the Russian primal depository financial institution was reportedly planning to slow down transactions to crypto exchanges in order to protect retail investors from "emotional" purchases of crypto.