Christine Lagarde, the President of the European Central Bank, has stated that most of the Russian businesses were currently undergoing Rubles trading to skirt most of the transactions. As of reports published on the 18th of March, the crypto trading volume for daily ruble-denominated transactions was sitting at around $7.4 million, which was down by 50% from most of the recent figures and a peak of about $70 million on the 7th of March, according to Chainalysis.
Rubles Trading Could Negate Western Sanctions on Russia
This amount of Rubles trading does represent just a tiny part of the total global crypto market volume, with the total daily volume of Bitcoin usually fluctuating between $20 billion and $40 billion. In a presentation at the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Summit on Tuesday, Lagarde- a known crypto skeptic, stated that the financial authorities of Europe had volumes of Ruble into cryptos, into staples, and they were currently operating at the highest level that was seen since 2021.
Lagarde didn’t directly point the finger at the government in Russia and went on to outline that it was primarily individuals and businesses in Russia that were turning towards cryptocurrencies. However, she did mention that cryptocurrencies were currently being used as a way to go beyond the sanctions.
Lagarde’s comments on Rube trading do seem to be at odds with the data that was provided by Kaiko and Chainalysis- along with that of experts. Jake Chervinsky of the Blockchain Association did state that Russia was quite unlikely to utilize most of the crypto assets which could be used as a way of going beyond the sanctions imposed by the Western world.
According to data that was provided by Kaiko, the cryptoanalysis firm was that rubles trading to Tether volume had gone down by 86% from its previous peak of $38 million on the 7th of March to less than $5 million on the 22nd of March. There was also a surge that went all the way to the war and then spiked afterward, but most of the volumes have now gone back to levels much below that was seen throughout February.
