With the war in Ukraine, cryptocurrencies come of age
With the ruble at rock bottom, the MOEX suspended after a 44% drop and Russia’s main banks expelled from SWIFT and the Visa and Mastercard networks, those Russians who can are moving into cryptocurrencies to try hold onto their cash. As a result, ruble-bitcoin transactions are at a nine-month high, prompting a 10% bitcoin price hike.
At the same time, cryptocurrencies are being used to get funds to Ukraine following the publication of a few e-wallets on Twitter by Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and minister for digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, which has triggered several thousand transactions.
Meanwhile, Fedorov has asked major crypto exchanges to block transactions from Russian and Belarusian users or to exclude the ruble from their exchanges, a request that some of these services are considering and others, such as the Ukrainian cryptoasset platform DMarket, already seem to be doing.
Others, such as Binance, says it will not comply with the Ukrainian request on the grounds that cryptocurrencies exist to provide greater financial freedom for people around the world and that it isn’t going to unilaterally freeze the accounts of millions of innocent people. That said, Binance claims to be taking steps to comply with sanctions against specific entities in Russia, leaving the door open to…
