Many people outside of the finance industry first learned about SWIFT when it was in the news that Russian banks had been excluded from the network as a consequ

Many people outside of the finance industry first learned about SWIFT when it was in the news that Russian banks had been excluded from the network as a consequence of their country’s violations of international law and attempt to conquer Ukraine. SWIFT’s relevance to cryptocurrency is most likely the cryptocurrency community’s aspirations of creating an alternate method for transferring wealth that is not limited by international borders or implicitly required to respect international sanctions. Legally, citizens in countries respecting the international law can still be liable for violating sanctions regardless of the method they use to transfer assets, so I don’t completely understand the how cryptocurrency is a superior way to launder money when the transactions occur on a public block chain.