At a dark time when the Ukrainian citizens have gotten a cold shoulder as their bank accounts are being frozen, they find solace in the world of crypto. As the Ukrainian Central Bank puts a cap on cash withdrawals and e-money transfers in the light of the Russian invasion Thursday, cryptocurrencies have come to the rescue as while Bitcoin (BTC) saw a surge in its trading volumes, Ukrainian cryptocurrency Kuna has almost tripled to more than $4 million by February 24, as reported by yue monitoring resource CoinGecko.
Kuna has over 40,000 active accounts out of which almost 90% of them belong to Ukrainian common folk. The spike observed thereafter has been from under $1 million which was reported on February 21, to a whopping $4.8 million today. This is the highest volume noted on the exchange since May 2021, before lowering down to its current normal of about $2 million.
As for the popular USDT stablecoin, the price of USDT (Tether) on Kuna has hiked nearly 5% in the past 24 hours, making it equivalent to about 32 Ukrainian hryvnia which is the country’s national currency. This price was calculated to be $1.10 per USDT.
It was only in early February that Rada, the Ukrainian legislature, had given a go signal to the central bank for bringing out Ukraine’s own national currency. Just a week before the Russian invasion unfolded, the country also legalized Bitcoin among other cryptocurrencies, with plans to open the cryptocurrency market to businesses as well as investors.
On the eve of that, Ukrainian organizations have found refuge in cryptocurrency for funding. For instance, NGOs like Come Back Alive, raised a staggering amount of $400,000 in Bitcoin in a single day after getting suspended from Patreon for “funding military activity”.
While they are being traded at a premium against the national currency of hryvnia, USDT which is the most popular stablecoin in respect of market cap has been isolated from the raging updates of the Russian attacks. The most global cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum both crashed on news of the Russian invasion, only to jump back up to about 10% in the last 24 hours.
