• The number of cryptocurrency transactions has tripled since the outbreak of conflict in Ukraine.
• After the West’s sanctions on Russia, the war has fuelled a tendency to make use of the conflict.
• Ukraine uses anonymous donations received from across the globe to fight the Russian invasion.

Due to their anonymity and ability to transfer money decentralized and anonymously, Bitcoin has been a popular storage and exchange option since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

BTC was able to recover some of its lost ground due to increased trade in Russia’s ruble-denominated cryptocurrency.

Inter-day transaction volumes have been rising by 259% since the invasion to 1.3 Billion Rubles (or $13.1 Million), Reuters noted, citing CryptoCompare data.

According to cryptocurrency exchange Kuna, the daily volume of cryptocurrency trading in Ukraine has also tripled to around 150 million Hryvnias, or about $5 million.

Eastern Europe sees a growing use of Bitcoin

Experts have noted a growing trend in the use of Bitcoin for value transfer as a result of the war in Eastern Europe and sanctions imposed by Western powers on the Russian government, said Bea O’Carroll, managing director of the investment firm in Radkl digital assets.

Radkl stated that it was “really interesting” to have a currency not under the control of the government and that does not get affected by emergencies. Perhaps this is the way Russia gets its money moved. The other option was “this is how Ukrainians will get value.” She added.
Bitcoin’s value has risen 13% in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While the US S&P 500 index also rose about 2%, whilst gold, which is usually a traditional safe haven, only rose 3.5% in price on February 24 when the invasion began.

Coinglass reports that close to $300,000,000 in short BTC positions had been liquidated the day before. QCP Capital, the Singapore-based digital assets trading firm, reported the removal of a large volume of “long leveraged positions”.

Russian oligarchs will use cryptocurrencies

The advantage of using digital assets is that they aren’t subject to sanctions. Transactions and storage of crypto currencies are performed from decentralized platforms to which only account holders have access.

Russian oligarchs who are ally with Vladimir Putin, and the most affected by Western sanctions, may be using Bitcoin to avoid sanctions.

“Bitcoin could be a potential safe haven for Russian oligarchs avoiding sanctions as there will be no censorship of the Bitcoin network and cryptocurrency transactions,” noted Swissquote Bank Senior Analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya.
He also commented that in general “cryptocurrencies could act as a powerful store of value for most of the holdings that don’t need to be liquid”.

Flipside

• Users of cryptocurrency are concerned about this situation, as it may lead to increased regulation by NATO members.
• Also, it is possible that BTC adoption and cryptocurrency use will rise in Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the region.

Ukraine is reaping the benefits of cryptocurrencies and has called on the world to help it fight the Russian invasion. Mykhailo Fedorov (Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine) called for assistance through transfer to Ether or BTC wallets.

Support the Ukrainian people. The official stated that we now accept cryptocurrency donations through his Twitter account (NYSE:).
According to Elliptic (a blockchain analytics company), the Ukrainian government has raised more than $22 million in cryptocurrency over that time, as have non-governmental organizations.

What You Need to Care About

• Although Bitcoin is becoming a currency to deal with conflicts in areas of high geopolitical risk, analysts and market players themselves are still not sure that it is an asset – safe haven like gold, given its volatility.

However, they do feed into the “narrative about bitcoin’s store of value during turbulent times,” says Zach Friedman, co-founder of Secure Digital Markets, a cryptocurrency brokerage firm.

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