Bitcoin has continued to rise since Monday night. In the early morning of Tuesday, Bitcoin rose by $2,000 in a short-term, breaking through the $44,000 mark at the highest level, rising by more than 17% at one point.
From 6:30 a.m. today, bitcoin prices jumped over $2,000 in 10 minutes and hit a session high of $44,198, the data showed, taking the past 24 hours to a 15.6% gain. In addition, other cryptocurrencies including Terra, Cardano and Solana have also risen in tandem, pushing the entire cryptocurrency market cap by $200 billion in the past 24 hours. At the time of writing, the global cryptocurrency market capitalization has reached $1.99 trillion, a 24-hour increase of 10.1%.
Previously, due to the escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Western countries imposed severe financial sanctions on Russia, and the Russian legal currency ruble plummeted to a record low. Based on this, the trading volume of the Russian ruble against Bitcoin continued to rise. Ruble-denominated bitcoin trading volumes surged to nearly 1.5 billion rubles on Thursday, the highest level since last May, according to data tracked by cryptocurrency research provider Kaiko. In addition, on Thursday, the USDT/RUB trading volume also rose to 1.3 billion rubles, an 8-month high.
The rise in trading volumes was largely driven by a flock to safe-haven assets as investors panicked over sanctions and the potential impact on the rouble.
Another potential factor affecting the cryptocurrency market is the attitude of Switzerland.
At the beginning of Russia’s fire on Ukraine, the Swiss government condemned the aggression in the harshest terms, but because of its neutral status, Switzerland said it would not fully adopt the EU’s sanctions plan against Russia and would not freeze the assets of Russian individuals and companies. However, on February 28, the Swiss government announced that it had withdrawn its previous position and decided to adopt all the sanctions imposed by the EU on Russia. Switzerland will freeze the assets of 363 individuals and four companies in Russia. The Swiss sanctions list also includes Russian Prime Minister Mishustin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The aforementioned sanctions are effective immediately. This move has been analyzed and recognized that more people have realized the charm of encrypted assets, and more people have poured into the cryptocurrency market.
It is worth noting, however, that the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a new rule that prohibits Americans from providing any support to Russian oligarchs and entities, including through the use of digital currencies or cryptoassets. The rule went into effect on March 1. Additionally, the U.S. Treasury Department has asked Binance, FTX, and Coinbase to block sanctioned people and addresses.
