Russians are fleeing the country and taking their money with them, but blockchain data indicates that crypto has not yet suffered the impact.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia triggered a major migration from both nations. Migrants and refugees used cryptocurrency to transport their savings, intending to keep them secure until they could convert them to fiat money.
Despite early jumps in trading volume in response to Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, the entire crypto market has remained relatively stable, according to statistics from blockchain analytics company Crystal Blockchain.
Crystal Blockchain from Bitfury is a comprehensive analytical tool that leverages sophisticated analytics to provide enterprises with a complete perspective of the ecosystem.
After monitoring wallets on key cryptocurrency exchanges and peer-to-peer marketplaces such as Paxful, Crystal Blockchain discovered that on-chain activity had not increased much since the conflict started, with transactions progressively declining and digital asset flows reducing.
“We think the decrease is related to market circumstances in general since prices fell in late 2021,” said Nick Smart, Crystal’s Director of Blockchain Intelligence.
Chainalysis indicates an early increase, but a subsequent fall
It’s worth noting that immediately after the conflict started, the main worldwide exchanges that used to accept ruble trading pairs imposed their own bans on Russian customers.
Binance has ceased taking Russian bank card payments, while CEX.io has blocked Russian users’ withdrawals and deposits. CoinZoom has temporarily suspended registrations from Russia.
Chainalysis previously stated in a blog article that daily Russian currency transaction volume increased significantly during the invasion, increasing from 900 percent to more than $70 million between February 19 and 24, the fastest growth rate since May 2021.
However, the business reported that activity has continued to fall with intermittent increases since then. Chainalysis also saw an increase in activity for Russian whales or huge crypto wallets. The company ascribed this to Russian users. Chainalysis found that throughout March, these wallets transmitted over $62 million in bitcoin to other addresses.
Because the majority of these addresses were related to OTC desks and exchanges, the company said that it is impossible to determine what this may indicate or whether the expenditure was involved with sanctions evasion.
According to Crystal Blockchain, although cryptocurrency will gain popularity in Russia, it will be mostly utilized as an “informal value-transfer mechanism” in the foreseeable future.
