Russians bought crypto during the Wagner rebellion – Kommersant

Against the backdrop of a military mutiny on June 24, the Russians were buying up the Tether cryptocurrency. In a day, the volume of stablecoin trading for rubles increased more than three times, to $15 million, the agency reported. Bloomberg with reference to data from a research company specializing in the crypto market CCData.

Transactions were made on exchanges that support trading in rubles, including Binance, Cryptonex, Coinsbit, HitBTC. According to Bloomberg, the research director of Kaiko, which researches blockchain technologies, the volume of Tether trading for rubles has reached a record high since December 2022.

As CCData Communications Manager Jamie Sly pointed out, the sharp increase in trading volume does not directly indicate that investors were buying Tether, but it does indicate that “market participants have turned their attention to an asset that is less volatile compared to rubles, such as USDT, since similar trends have not been observed for bitcoin.”

Previously, the demand of Russians for cryptocurrencies, especially for the stablecoin USDT, significantly increased. increased after the announcement of partial mobilization on 21 September. This month, the exchange has typically been p2p on the Binance or Garantex exchanges.

How calculated RBC based on data from the Central Bank, the amount of cash in circulation against the backdrop of the rebellion PMC “Wagner” increased by 105.3 billion rubles. According to the government, on the day of the rebellion in 15 regions, the demand for cash was 30% higher than usual, and in the Voronezh, Rostov, Lipetsk regions and in large cities – by 70-80%.

Anastasia Larina