The most interesting finance and tech news from Russia and the world for the week: RKN blocked FaceTime, Snapchat, and Roblox, visa-free travel with China and Saudi Arabia, Russia was added to the EU's money laundering blacklist, home surveillance cameras were hacked in South Korea, Musk's Twitter was fined in Europe, and rumors of a 'garlic' model from OpenAI.
RKN's Rampage
🐌 This week, Roskomnadzor blocked as many as three popular services. First, for terrorism, extremism, and fraud, they went after FaceTime and Snapchat (read: the remaining alternatives to the already throttled WhatsApp).
Secondly, they restricted access to Roblox servers. The game is accused of poor moderation, which allegedly allows children to find extremist content or encounter pedophiles in chat. Roblox is very popular in Russia – it has a daily audience of 7 million people, the third-largest in the world after the US and Brazil. Schoolchildren are already outraged – holding funerals for Roblox and recording sad TikToks.
🐌 Meanwhile, according to deputy Svintsov from the State Duma Committee on IT Policy, there are supposedly no plans to block Telegram in Russia. They explain this by saying that most of the blocked services are based in the US and cooperate with Western intelligence agencies, while Telegram operates in friendly Dubai and, like, actively doesn't refuse to cooperate with the 'right' authorities. So Svintsov sold Durov out, it seems – ruining his rebel-anarchist image!
🐌 And on the same topic: Gosuslugi is slowly starting to roll out authorization on mobile devices exclusively through the Max messenger. Previously, you could skip the banner suggesting you download the messenger for authorization and log in via SMS, but now some users have lost this option. After media publications, the Ministry of Digital Development stated that SMS login will be gradually phased out – naturally, 'due to fraud' (as if there are no fraudsters on Max, of course!).
For now, you can still log in to Gosuslugi through the web version (with SMS authentication) and set up login via an authenticator with one-time codes – then you won't need Max or SMS.
News from Russia: Visa-free travel with someone, at least
🐌 Russia and Saudi Arabia have signed a visa-free travel agreement, and Chinese citizens have also been allowed visa-free entry into Russia (this measure has been in effect for Russians traveling to China since September).
🐌 For the first time in two and a half years, the dollar exchange rate has fallen to 76 rubles. Nabiullina doesn't know what to do to bring the ruble rate down – they've just announced the lifting of restrictions from December 8 on transferring money in foreign currency abroad for citizens of Russia and 'friendly countries' (previously, you could only transfer up to $1 million a month directly in foreign currency). Although, it seems that everyone who needed to has long since figured out how to move capital abroad in rubles without restrictions.
Larisadoling: Damage Control at maximum
🐌 Larisa Dolina appeared on 'Let Them Talk,' commenting for the first time on the apartment scandal. There, she claimed she had been silent all this time allegedly due to a non-disclosure agreement in a criminal case, and that a concert tour also prevented her from speaking to the media. On the show, she detailed the scheme used by the fraudsters to deceive her. The funny part: the passport of the alleged Rosfinmonitoring employee sent to Dolina by the scammers had a crooked photo of Tom Holland pasted in it.
Dolina also promised to return the money for the apartment to Polina Lurie (the buyer). However, she also said she doesn't have that kind of money, so the refund will happen sometime later. Why this is a good PR move but a sketchy offer for Lurie – I wrote about it in more detail on my channel right here.
🐌 Meanwhile, the Supreme Court accepted the appeal in Dolina's case in record time and promised to review it as early as December 16 – apparently, an order came from 'above' after all the publicity. Usually, the Supreme Court reviews about 1% of filed appeals, and not very quickly. What to expect from the Supreme Court is written about here by lawyer Alexander Malyutin.
🐌 And to top it all off, Larisa Dolina was invited to the State Duma on December 17 for a round table on fraud in the secondary housing market. She'll probably be holding a master class there. By the way, I did a little cross-referencing of sources and found out that Dolina has officially become the woolliest mammoth (a slang term for a scam victim) of the Russian Federation for 2024 – I wrote the details on my channel right here (there's also a link to a cool long read about how these fraudulent call centers work, it's an unpleasant read in places).
The Mad Printer and its Consequences
🐌 BAZA reports on two fines for Telegram nicknames: both are related to the symbols of the 'extremist movement' AUE. Two guys were fined a thousand rubles each – one for an inappropriate nickname ('auezinvoram'), and the other for a 'thief's star' next to his name. I, for one, don't even know what this thief's star looks like! Stars in general are some damn dangerous symbols – if you squint, you could mistake it for a satanic pentagram (banned in the RF), or for this AUE nonsense...
🐌 The State Duma is keeping up with the times – they are addressing the issue of content created by neural networks. While the initial plan was to introduce labeling for AI content, they later proposed labeling content created by humans. All that's left for the final reading is to add some kind of registry for all this, and a new 3% tax on 'meat content' to boot.
🐌 IT companies that benefit from state privileges have been obligated to pay universities 3% of their saved funds. However, they can't just pay it off – companies must participate in developing curricula for partner universities, provide internships for students, and send their employees to teach. A good analysis of the measure is available from Dima Filonov.
🐌 The Ministry of Finance is considering restricting the withdrawal of co-financing from the Voluntary Pension Savings (PDS). In 2025, 20 billion rubles were withdrawn from these pension accounts – where is this heading? These accounts were created for putting money in, taking it back out is just excessive…
🐌 A bill has been introduced in the State Duma on the issuance of digital financial assets (DFA) backed by mortgages. Guys, rewatch the movie 'The Big Short' – it contains hints about how all this might end!
🐌 The LDPR party has proposed introducing administrative fines of up to 500,000 rubles for bullying, specifically for 'systematic humiliation of the honor and dignity of citizens, including on the internet and in the media.' The timing makes it look a bit like a 'law to protect L. Dolina,' to be honest.
The Good Printer
🐌 In the State Duma, a bill has been prepared regarding the activities of tourist aggregators. It is designed to avoid a repeat of the case of Alexander Kim, the creator of the 'Sputnik' aggregator. He was imprisoned for an accident on an excursion for which tickets were sold on his website. Essentially, the law absolves aggregators of responsibility for the improper provision of services, information about which was posted on their platform.
🐌 Russian tourists are promised to be allowed to pay foreigners for goods and services in cash currency abroad. The authorities realized that this has formally been a violation of Russian currency legislation for many years and should, generally speaking, be punishable by fines of up to 40% of the amount of the 'prohibited transactions.' In short, the laws are formulated in such a way that it's almost impossible not to break them.
🐌 Investors in redomiciled companies have been relieved from excess personal income tax accrual. Anyone who bought stocks like Rusagro/X5 for redomiciliation should read up on this, it's relevant for you.
Sanctions: EU Blacklist
🐌 The European Union plans to add Russia to its blacklist of countries with a high risk of money laundering and terrorist financing – this change will take effect from the beginning of 2026. The Bell (foreign agents) wrote a memo on what awaits people with Russian passports in the EU – apparently, nothing super-terrible is expected, except for even more severe anal probing of all money transfers related to Russia. But let's admit, money from Russia to Europe directly wasn't moving very briskly before either.
True, there's a risk that banks will be even more reluctant to serve clients with Russian passports – why would they need this extra compliance hassle? And depositing money into an EU bank, even indirectly from Russia, with the justification 'I just sold my apartment in my native Orenburg' might become more difficult. Two more analyses on the topic: from Oninvest and DW.
🐌 Revolut kind of freaked out and sent out a ban to some clients on topping up their accounts with cards from about 50 countries – including popular jurisdictions for emigrants like Turkey and Serbia, as well as almost all post-Soviet countries.
🐌 A murky story is unfolding for Porsche owners in Russia – they are increasingly encountering satellite-based blocking of their cars. Essentially, the car turns into a 'brick,' and the block can only be disabled at a service center. It's still unclear whether this is a deliberate company policy or not.
🐌 The European Commission has presented a draft of a reparations loan funded by Russian assets, which proposes to ban any possible withdrawal of these assets back to Russia, as well as to prohibit their return through foreign court decisions. Discussions will take place on December 18–19.
The authorities in Belgium, where most of the assets are located, have consistently opposed such a decision. They believe that Russia will sooner or later demand its money back, and if it has already been spent on the 'reparations loan' by then, it will have to be paid out of the pockets of European taxpayers. Euroclear has also once again criticized the measure.
World News: A New Billionaire Bettor
🐌 29-year-old Luana Lopes Lara has become the new youngest self-made female billionaire. She is the co-founder of the prediction platform Kalshi, which was just valued at $11 billion in a recent deal, making Luana's stake worth $1.3 billion.
🐌 And on the topic of betting markets: CZ announced the launch of his own prediction betting platform based on the BNB Chain. In short, dabbling in betting is trendy these days!
🐌 In South Korea, hackers hacked over 120,000 home surveillance cameras (usually used to monitor children or pets). Some of the footage was sold to porn sites.
🐌 Netflix is buying Warner Bros for $72 billion. All the movie buffs and cinephiles are outraged: how dare these web streamers touch our cinematic icon with their dirty hands??
Musk News: Euro-fines from the European Commission
🐌 The European Commission has fined Twitter €120 million for violating a certain Digital Services Act. A year ago, Musk wrote that European officials had allegedly promised not to impose a fine if the social network quietly censored certain accounts upon request. Now that the EC's decision has come into force, discussions on this have flared up with new vigor: Pavel Durov recalled his own criminal case, and American officials called the practice of fines an attack on American companies. In the end, Elon, as usual, quickly got carried away and even called for the complete liquidation of the European Union as a structure.
🐌 According to the WSJ, SpaceX is preparing for a new round of fundraising – the company's valuation could reach $800 billion, in which case it would once again surpass OpenAI. It seems the dick-measuring contest between Altman and Musk is now the main driver of growth in the US private investment market.
AI News: OpenAI is having a panic attack
🐌 The Information obtained internal OpenAI correspondence – in it, Sam Altman declares a 'red alert' due to growing competition from Google. The company is reassigning more and more employees from non-essential projects to improving ChatGPT. The publication also shares information about future models from OpenAI – we may soon see the release of GPT-5.2 or GPT-5.5. The wonders of strange naming continue: in addition to the previously announced Shalopeat model (what the heck?), they are now predicting the release of a language model called Garlic.
🐌 Also, more and more users are reporting the appearance of test ads in ChatGPT in the form of a small banner at the end of a message. But OpenAI employees write 'no-o-o, it just looks like an ad, but it's not an ad, we're not actually getting paid for it!!'.
🐌 Anthropic has released an article about how AI agents are already capable of finding vulnerabilities in smart contracts. The company created a benchmark where neural networks are set loose on locally run copies of blockchains (Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Base). The results are measured in the number of dollars the neural network could have stolen in reality. As a result, Opus 4.5 managed to 'farm' $4.6 million in an hour (it's just a shame it was on a 'demo account').
🐌 By the way, last week on November 30, it was exactly 3 years since the release of ChatGPT. In honor of this, the FT compiled statistics on how the service is holding up against competitors:
Good news of the week
🐌 Last week, my private club hosted a lecture 'Personal Finance in the New Reality' (I've already posted the recording). It turned out to be three hours long: an hour and a half for the lecture itself, and another hour and a half for Q&A. Judging by the feedback, it was useful! (The next lecture will be about assessing the expected returns of asset classes for 2026.)
Bonus posts of the week from my Telegram channels
🐌 An interesting study on the career success of women with genetic infertility in Sweden: where does the income gap between men and women come from?
🐌 Applied rationality doesn't always have to look like Spock on steroids (a remote discussion with Vadim Savitsky about ticket reselling).
🐌 Heard stories about the amazing wonders of dividend investing? It's just regular compound interest...
🐌 The official position of the FTS of Russia: you don't need to register your crypto wallets with the tax authorities.
🐌 A cool story from Smartlab about 'investing in a reliable trader with a 20–30% monthly return and x100 leverage' – it's funny in places!