The crypto market has been subject to fluctuations this month, and especially in the last one week when Russia began invading Ukraine and garnered major criticism from majority nations. Bitcoin opened with a loss of 1.67 percent to trade at $40,458 (roughly Rs. 30.5 lakh) on Indian exchange CoinSwitch Kuber. On Monday, February 28, Bitcoin values managed to hover around the mark of $40,000 (roughly Rs. 30 lakh), that it touched earlier this month for the first time in 2022.
BTC saw small losses on international exchanges as well. On CoinMarketCap and Binance for instance, Bitcoin prices dropped by around 1.25 percent to open trading at around $37,770 (roughly Rs. 28.5 lakh).
Ether’s market-movement trajectory replicated that of Bitcoin. With a loss of 3.9 percent, ETH is trading at $2,753 (roughly Rs. 2 lakh) according to Gadgets 360’s crypto price tracker.
Ether saw smaller losses of around 2.5 percent on international exchanges like Coinbase. The second-most valued cryptocurrency is trading at $2,614 (roughly Rs. 1.98 lakh), with only a marginal difference from its rates in India.
Binance Coin, Ripple, Polkadot, Terra, and Avalanche are other altcoins to have opened with losses on the last day of February.
Dogecoin and Shiba Inu also failed to bag any gains.
Some altcoins however, did manage to see profits, but only miniscule.
Stablecoins such as Tether, Binance USD, and USD Coin along with Uniswap, Cardano and Solana contributed in maintaining the greens on the crypto price charts.
Stablecoins are those crypto assets that are collateralised by the value of an underlying “stable” reserve assets like gold or dollar.
Ukraine has been under Russian attack for the last four days now.
As intense geo-political tensions continue to shake-up high risk stock and crypto markets, safe haven assets like gold and fiat currencies are attracting more investors.
In a bid to collect emergency funds, Ukraine began accepting donations in cryptocurrency from around the world. Over the weekend, the official Twitter handle of Ukraine posted crypto wallet addresses for donations in BTC and ETH.
Stand with the people of Ukraine. Now accepting cryptocurrency donations. Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT.
BTC – 357a3So9CbsNfBBgFYACGvxxS6tMaDoa1P
ETH and USDT (ERC-20) – 0x165CD37b4C644C2921454429E7F9358d18A45e14
— Ukraine / Україна (@Ukraine) February 26, 2022
As per blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, Ukraine has already collected $8 million (roughly Rs. 60 crore) from crypto donations.
Cryptocurrencies, unregulated and dencetralised in nature, can be an economic game-changer in these rough times. The digital assets are, after all, capable of facilitating instant cross-border money transfers with no amount limit.
With Ukrainian residents hunting for safety and food in the backdrop of explosions, the government of Ukraine has called for a big crypto crackdown on Russia.
Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has requested all major crypto exchanges to block Russian users for the time being.
I’m asking all major crypto exchanges to block addresses of Russian users.
It’s crucial to freeze not only the addresses linked to Russian and Belarusian politicians, but also to sabotage ordinary users.
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 27, 2022
Received breaking news. @dmarket, a platform for trading NFT & In-game Metaverse items, decided to freeze the accounts of users from the Russian Federation and Belarus. Funds from these accounts could be donated to the war effort. Nowadays Robin Hoods. Bravo.
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 27, 2022
The market cap of the crypto sector currently stands at $1.7 trillion (roughly Rs. 1,29,35,807 crore), as per CoinMarketCap.
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