RT’s Boom Bust has sat in with the CEO of cryptocurrency aggregator Bitsian to discuss how nations facing tough US sanctions have been exploring cryptocurrencies in attempt to shield their economies from damage.

“These countries are looking at this as a way to avoid sanctions, but also these are countries, where their own sovereign currencies are facing huge amount of devaluation and lack of trust by their own people,” Raakhee Miller told Boom Bust.

The CEO said that countries such as Venezuela and Iran face a “flight-to-quality” so bitcoin becomes more trustworthy for people to keep their assets. However, it is still unclear if this will help to fully skirt the economic restrictions.

“[If] this is a means to avoid sanctions and to make their banking system more sanction-proof is yet to be seen, because at the end of the day the currencies are backed by the same sovereign currencies which are facing these issues. So, it remains to be seen whether this will be effective in any major cross border transactions,” Miller said.