This crisis seriously shaken my attitude towards financial system. Ideas that was reasonable and clear in popular books collapsed facing reality
Bank system
Right after Russian aggression National Bank of Ukraine ordered to block all Ukrainian cards and money I had there (~5000$) disappeared from my Raiffeisen bank account. Bad tings about it that they haven’t even noticed my about it. Good for me I had another cards issued by Russian banks and could cope with this issue. It’s not good to find yourself on gas station with empty tank with blocked card.
Another challenge was exodus of western companies from Russia. However, MasterCard and Visa gave some time to get cash before they stopped supporting Russian users. After they did it, I am living without cards at all and it’s a real challenge to get money abroad from Russian bank account.
I think the advises to have money in bank for three months of living are good one, but its much better to have them in cash. Another lesson learned, is that you don’t need to keep large sum in bank abroad, at least in developing countries. Government there could take it without any hesitations and warnings.
ETFs
All financial gurus told us it’s the most convenient, safe and liquid way for investments. You could own a portion of entire market for couple dollars, fees are small and complex structure of functioning guarantees you that your money are working well and you can get them back any time.
I was a big fan of FinEx funds, and have considerable amount of money allocated there. However, after the war European depository (Euroclear) blocked all Russian assets and ETFs have not been traded after it. I couldn’t sell them and get my money back and nobody knows when they returned on market. The tool I consedered as a safe heaven – ETF on Russian euro bonds (FXRU) – turned out to be the most risky option. Russian companies couldn’t pay their debts because their assets locked, and I could not get rid of toxic fund because it is not tradable any longer.
So another lesson is to keep away from complex products like ETFs, Structural Notes and so on. And once again avoid emerging markets, of course
Cryptocurrencies
I never considered Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies as a reputable instrument. However, after all these sanctions toward Russia it turned out that they are very useful. Last week I read a lot about them and played around with different tools, wallets and apps. As far as I understand, the most popular currencies are Bitcoin, Etherium and Tether. The last one is a stablecoin. Its exchange rate is liked to US dollar and it’s not too volatile, so this tool is the most convenient for international transfers.
To get crypto you need to buy it on exchange or from other people (p2p transfer). In my case I could purchase only from other person, because Russian cards are blocked. Binance provides a convenient way to buy crypto. You should select from various sellers the best rate and reputation, sent them money via bank transfer inside Russia and get crypto on your exchange account.
To get real (or fiat) money, you need to sell crypto. You could do it in the same manner on Binance and get money directly on your foreign card. But in my case I have none of them. So I used bitomats and exhange offices. In Poland there is a company https://flyingatom.com/ that provides such services. In bitomat you should select how much money you need and then transfer crypto in a certain amount on the wallet they showed you on screen. After the transfer you need to wait near the bitomat for a while until crypto network confirms the transfer. Then you will get a message and could redeem your money.
It sounds smooth, but there are a lot of errors I did. At first, I decided to use crypto wallet (trust Wallet) to send money from exchange after the purchase. This was a huge mistake. I transferred my USDTs with the cheapest option through Solana network. And it turned out that for bitomat I need Etheriun networn (ERC20) and my wallet is not suitable for the transfer. The only way was to transfer money back to Binance. But to do it you need to pay fee not in USDT but in SOL (solana network currency). There is no way to get SOL neither from wallet not through Binance and some money stacked in useless wallet. So it’s much better to cash out money directly from Binance. You don’t need to deal with other currencies to pay network fees.
After all tries and errors, I was able to get my paycheck in USDT from my Ukrainian employer and cashed them out in Bitomat nearby.