Good point but circling back to sanctions:
You believe there should be a centralized agent that can control the rails of public infrastructure to get what they want? This is a very anti-crypto pro-imperialist stance, which I find odd.
It's the same logic behind a criminal getting off on a charge on a technicality. Innocent until proven guilty. It's more important for everyone to be treated fairly on an equal playing field than it is to bend and break the rules to punish.
Ah, I'm absolutely definitely no expert but I haven't been viewing SWIFT as a centralized agent. I mean, it is in that everything goes through it, but it's not in that its a cooperative of 10 countries... so I've kind of always viewed it as a non-profit-driven community project. I personally haven't had a problem with SWIFT cutting off Russia's access to the network because I imagined most, if not all, of the member countries would have imposed their individual sanctions anyway (so I assumed it was just very efficient) - but now that I'm typing that out that might have been the wrong way to look at it.
As an XRP fan, I'm absolutely onboard for an alternative to SWIFT, especially one that is more efficient and less expensive. If a grass-roots Russian civilian project was building crypto infrastructure to help civilians get resources I'd be all for it, but I can't really get excited about the Russian government developing a CBDC to get around sanctions so they can get more weapons to bomb Ukrainian civilians in their homes.
I'm really excited about crypto to make people's lives better, especially where they are underserved by corporations and governments, but I think it's also important to call out where it has the potential for harm as well, as I do think it does in this case.