It has only been a few days since Russia has decided to declare war on the country of Ukraine. Ever since that decision, several countries have been forwarding economic sanctions to Russia in order to show their contempt for such a heinous act.
However, according to Dent Crypto news today, despite having such a huge amount of increase in the number of Economic sanctions on the country of Russia, the total amount of cryptocurrency that is being purchased in Rubles across different important exchanges is still falling.
Important data from a firm that conducts Blockchain analysis has shown that all the activities of Russian denominated crypto trading and purchasing on different important exchanges have actually faltered.
This has led to the debunking of different theories such as the country might pivot to different digital assets in order to circumvent the sanctions. When Bitcoin actually properly rallied over about 15% just last week, predictions were made by experts.
People attributed that Russia was buying cryptocurrency in order to deal with or bypass the economic sanctions. However, this theory is nothing close to the actual truth.
Chainlysis, a blockchain analysis firm has shown us that the crypto trading using the Ruble denomination was just about $34.1 million on the 3rd of March. This is just half of the recent peak that happened on the 24th of February which amounted up t about $70.7 million.
Analysis Shows Russia Might Not Use Crypto For Evading Economic Sanctions
Providing some light on the matter of sanctions-fueled crypto purchasing to Bloomberg, Citigroup analyst Alexander Saunders said, “Russian volumes have been relatively small so far, suggesting that the price action is more due to investors positioning for an expected uptick in demand from Russia, rather than Russian demand itself.”
Despite experts rejecting the idea that crypto could be used to help Russia skirt economic sanctions, the U.S. and the E.U. are still increasing their regulatory scrutiny of digital assets.
Recently, New York state increased its blockchain surveillance capacities to further prevent cryptocurrencies or digital assets from being used to support Russian interests.
NY Governor, Kathy Hochul issued an executive order on Feb. 27 directing state agencies to divest from Russian institutions and companies, as well as entities that provide them with support. She said: “New York is proudly home to the nation‘s largest Ukrainian population and we will use our technology assets to protect our people and show Russia that we will hold them accountable.”
Highlighting the other side of the narrative, Jake Chervinsky, head of policy at the Blockchain Association in the U.S., went as far as to call these concerns about crypto “totally unfounded”.
Further echoing this sentiment was Ari Redbord, head of legal and government affairs at crypto crime investigator TRM Labs, stating that it’s too late for crypto assets to be able to provide enough liquidity for Russia and that the public nature of blockchains is already a sufficient deterrent for those seeking to circumvent sanctions. “Russia cannot use crypto to replace the hundreds of billions of dollars that could be potentially blocked or frozen.”
Also Read: As Russia Commences Military Intervention in Ukraine, Crypto Markets Plummet by $200 billion
Since there are some looming actions that are to be taken against Russia from the international community, most of the cryptocurrency exchanges have actually made the decision of blacklisting the different organizations and individuals that have been sanctioned.
However, Binance has politely refused any requests of censoring the different accounts for the Russian customers that are innocent. Still, the value of crypto transactions in Russia is simply falling.
So, if we go by the words of Dent crypto news today, the theories that Russia might be using cryptocurrency to evade the economic sanctions by different countries have been proven to be completely false.
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