The ongoing Russian conflict has caused Euro Union and other political powers to heavily sanction Russia. Some of these sanctions involve blocking bank transfers between the eurozone and Russia.
Now I do not want to enter a political discussion here, but I think most of these sanctions are actually hurting the individual citizens more than the government to whom they should be targeted.
This has caused that a lot of people that live abroad cannot for instance send money to their loved ones in the country, spend money whenever they go there for a visit, or for people who live and earn money in Russia to spend that money abroad.
Additionally, many banks have seized Russian-owned bank accounts in Europe, essentially stealing their money without them being able to do anything to prevent this.
Of course we could get in the argument here that you do not really own your hard-earned fiat money. After all, if I cannot spend my fiat money in a bakery in Russia, do I really own my money?
This is where Monero shines (or should be shining) in my opinion. Monero should give Russians the ability to break free from these sanctions and actually spend their money however they want.
However, looking into Haveno, there are 0 offers in Russian Rubles (RUB), and historically there have been zero trades with RUB. Also trying to find information on Russian forums about Haveno, no one seems to talk about it at all.
However, before Haveno came out officially, I used another centralized P2P exchange called bitpapa, which I do not promote or recommend, as even though I used it without problems on some occasions, I do not know if it can be fully trusted.
My experience is that (maybe just a coincidence) all trades I did there were done with Russians. So it seems that that platform might be the one preferred by them.
And here is where I want to open a discussion:
Why do you guys think is the reason that there are so little trades in a currency so heavily sanctioned, when Monero is supposed to fight exactly against this kind of issue?
Perhaps there is some failure in our communication methods, and the information about Haveno is not reaching the relevant forums or circles?
Of course. That's the point. Sanctions rarely ever harm the leaders. Do you think 1000 times harsher sanctions would affect the North Korean dictator one bit? Sanctions are meant to cause so much civilian pain that the governments has no choice but to yield or risk revolution. Causing revolution in the enemy to weaken it is an extremely old and effective strategy to win without fighting. The US would not likely exist without the support of the French of the American revolution against the British. Of course, the french monarchy might still be around if it did not go bankrupt funding the American revolution, thus causing its own revolution, so this strategy has its dangers.
I understand your point, however that is not really the topic at hand, I was just trying to give some context and to open the discussion as to why XMR does not seem to be gaining traction in Russia or why there are no Ruble trades in Haveno.
It is irrelevant for the conversation if it is a good or a bad strategy, or if it is moral or immoral to apply these sanctions. If I were a Russian individual, I would be using Monero to escape these sanctions, which leads me to wonder whether or not this is happening or why we do not see Russian trades in Haveno.
Given Monero's anonymity and the media lock out, it would be hard to know how popular Monero is in Russia. Haveno isn't the best measure of adoption. Perhaps Russians prefer swapping Monero for other easier to acquire crypto on Russia-agnostic DEXes? Remember also Russian citizens are masters of covert communications. Back when computer programs were on cassette tapes a common strategy was to embed programs and documents in the middle of extremely hard to listen to music like high volume death metal or MERZBOW Woodpecker #1. Any guard charged with finding illegal content would have to listen through hours of ear-bleeding and harsh music before they could detect that "something" was being hidden. Perhaps there's an active trade in the underground market which the average citizen is a part of. Perhaps they have an active independent street exchange as is available in Argentina (from what I know, street vendors tend to give the best rates).