Since Bitcoin ATH in November last year when it peaked almost $69k, there was declining in BTC price, first big declining was at 23rd January at $35,180, meanwhile it went up to $44,500 and with the start of the war in Ukraine on 24th February dropped to $37,300. Bitcoin current price is $38,062.00 with a marketcap of $720,875 billions, Its price is -2.18% down in last 24 hours.
Entrepreneur Lex Moskovski has provided Glassnode chart that shows that the number of the so-called accumulation wallets reached a new all-time high. This refers to those Bitcoin Wallets that have recorded activity in recent times but haven’t spent any BTC.
However, it was later updated that the increase was due to a large WBTC custodian creating new addresses and moving reserves into them, instead of whale accumulation like previously thought. Regardless of which, Bitcoin is recovering well, considering the news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, which resulted to temporarily drop on most of the cryptocurrencies.
But we have also witnessed incredible importance of the crypto world in dramatic geological changes. Thousands of donations in Bitcoin has been sent to Ukrainian people from around the world, and have proven to be incredibly important. That being said, this can be beneficial for the invader too.
Russia’s national currency has crushed drastically in the wake of the Western sanctions on the central bank.
Couple of days ago, the European Union announced that within 10 days, it intends to remove seven Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, messaging system. Without access to SWIFT, which is a Belgian messaging system that connects over 11,000 financial institutions worldwide. Russian banks and the Russian economy are likely to endure severe losses. For example, Iran lost 30% of its foreign trade after being banned from SWIFT in 2012.
The Russian ruble has lost nearly 30% of its value since the invasion of Ukraine began last week. The economic repercussions are said to have devastated the savings of ordinary Russians. To make matters worse, the EU has also prohibited transferring euro banknotes to Russia.
This being said Crypto trading volume is surging part due to high demand from Russia and Ukraine, with both countries suffering severe risks of currency destabilization. Stablecoins, in particular, play a vital role in countries facing sanctions. There was an example in Venezuela where they supported their families by converting their local salary into Tether (USDT) via an app called Reserve amid ongoing hyperinflation.
This is another proof that digital currencies had become a vital instrument of accessing services amid sanctions against countries.
The raging world inflation, particulary in countries that suffered great financial loses due to their fiat currencies, but adoption of crypto was excelerated where inflation was at highest level. Here is countries with highest inflation rate:
Venezuela 472% Jan/22
Sudan 260% Jan/22
Lebanon 240% Feb/22
Syria 139% Aug/21
Cuba 77% Dec/21
Zimbabwe 66% Feb/22
Suriname 61% Jan/22
Turkey 54% Feb/22
Argentina 50% Jan/22
Iran 35% Feb/22
On the other side Ukraine has received millions of dollars worth of crypto assets since the Russian invasion last month. Nearly $51 million have been sent to the Ukrainian government so far.
The donations have been led by Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polkadot and many others.
Co-founder of Polkadot and its canary network Kusama (KSM) Gavin Wood has donated $5 million worth of DOT.
Binance, (the world’s largest crypto exchange platform) will donate $10 million in charitable contributions. The platform also launched a crowdfunding that raised millions of dollars in crypto assets for Ukrainian people.
This new world Geopolitical situation proves once again the utility and real world use-case of cryptocurrencies especially the use of DeFi (to avoid custody to your private funds). The future of Crypto is bright, as once again, Bitcoin proved it’s value. Hopefully in the future we are going to use crypto in peaceful world and live in prosperity.
