BTC’s Trading Volumes In Russia And Ukraine Surge: Analysis

BTC’s trading volume in Russia and Ukraine is surging as the ruble reaches historic low levels so let’s take a closer look at today’s bitcoin news.

BTC’s trading volumes in Russia and Ukraine surge to a new high which is possibly the highest level in almost a year. At the same time, those that employ Ukraine’s national currency reached October 2021 heights. NATO and the EU are standing away from a direct military conflict and promised not to send troops to Ukraine however they did impose severe monetary sanctions on Russia and aim to destabilize it and eventually cut its financial connections. The embargoes slammed Russia’s economy and its national currency with the ruble losing around 25% of its value in 24 hours.

Contrary to fiat currency, the crypto market data provider Kaiko revealed that BTC is gaining traction in the region after the sanctions, and the BTC trading volumes against the ruble reached the highest level since 2021 while those using the Ukrainian currency hit an October peak. Speaking on the matter was the head of Kaiko research Clara Medalie:

“The trend follows a wave of sanctions against Russia, which has disrupted forex markets and caused the ruble to sink to records law against the dollar.”

Medalie noted that the overall tradign volume for BTC surged during the past seven days and she added that the increased activity for BTC/UAH and BTC/RUB trading pairs was much bigger than the BTC/USD one. Experts believe that the financial uncertainty will cause Russians to convert their money into digital assets and even the Ukrainian Vice PM urged exchanges to freeze addresses of Russian users.

Some leading trading venues already announced they will not follow such requests and Kraken’s CEO Jesse Powell noted that BTC is the representation of liberation values and his company can’t block customers’ accounts without a legal requirement but also assumed that most Russian-based users will be against the war. At the same time, Binance said that crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom and this initiative can oppose the concept of the asset class. Speaking of countries that pass through financial turmoil and it is worth mentioning Turkey because the lira collapsed to record lows which caused locals to look for other monetary tools to preserve their savings and turned to crypto.

Research from the end of 2021, showed that both Tether and BTC were among the most popular trades against the lira for the past three years and the study even estimated that more than 16% of the world’s crypto users came from Turkey.