A Belarusian bought dollars — and lost 1,550 rubles doing so

Buying dollars is a strategy for Belarusians, proven over decades. But in 2025, it failed. From January to November 2025, Aliaksandr bought $14,754, which was equivalent to 44,378 BYN at the exchange rates at the time of purchase. If the man had saved in Belarusian rubles, he would have had 1,500 BYN more. Let's break down the story.

How the exchange rate changed in 2025

The past year 2025 began with the National Bank's exchange rate at 3.4753 rubles per dollar (as of January 1, 2025), and by January 1, 2026, the rate had dropped to 2.9027. The ruble strengthened against the dollar by almost 20% over the year.

The National Bank explained this with three factors:

Belarusian businesses reduced demand for the dollar due to changes in the structure of foreign trade settlements;

the dollar itself weakened in global markets;

the Russian ruble strengthened (our ruble is pegged to the Russian one by approximately 50%).

Each factor individually would have caused a correction. All three together ensured a 20% reversal of the multi-year trend.

Purchase Diary — history in numbers

Here is a personal history of dollar purchases in 2025. The first purchase in January — at 3.487. The last in November — already at 2.959.

The diary owner saw that each subsequent purchase was at a lower exchange rate. Although in that situation, he acted very smartly: the cheaper you buy, the more profit you get from the future growth of the dollar.

What's interesting in this diary

Aliaksandr didn't just buy dollars — he monitored the exchange rate within the bank. Thanks to this, the benefit over the year amounted to 121.92 rubles. If the man had bought dollars at the worst rate (say, by chance), the losses would have amounted to 108.61 rubles. But, unfortunately, the total loss for the year was 1,550 BYN.

What was the alternative?

Ruble deposits in 2025 offered 10-15% annual interest on irrevocable deposits. Those that could be topped up offered slightly less, but still significant.

If each time the diary owner spent rubles on dollars, he instead placed the same amounts into a ruble deposit at 10% annual interest — by the end of the year he would have received about 2,200-2,500 rubles in interest income. Plus the saved 1,550 rubles from the exchange rate difference.

Result: the profit in rubles would have been about 8-9% of the invested 44,378 — approximately 3,700-4,000 rubles.

Interestingly, the majority of Belarusian residents understood the situation faster: the share of ruble deposits in the total volume of deposits grew from one-third to more than half over the year.

Should stereotypes be changed?

To say now that "dollars are a thing of the past, and deposits are where the profit is," would be an oversimplification.

Last year was an exception to a rule that has been in effect for almost the entire existence of the Belarusian ruble. Whether this will be repeated in 2026 is a separate question, and no one is rushing to answer it. And the described story only shows that any strategy, launched automatically and without review, sooner or later may prove to be unprofitable during an unsuitable period.

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