Bitcoin and Ethereum both retreated, losing some of the gains made earlier in the week as bodies such as the UK's Treasury and the UK's Financial Co
Bitcoin and Ethereum both retreated, losing some of the gains made earlier in the week as bodies such as the UK’s Treasury and the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority call on crypto companies to be tougher in implementing their sanctions.
Bitcoin fell 4.91%, down to US$41,330 while Ethereum fell 6.30% to US$2,723.
Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior analyst at Swissquote believes it is becoming “clearer by the day that it (Bitcoin) won’t be a hassle-free safe haven to investors.”
“Western forces are going after the coin to impose strict regulations to prevent Russians from going around the sanctions that are imposed to them,” he adds.
Government bodies in the UK, US and EU have reportedly been in talks with crypto exchanges and companies to urge them to get tougher with the sanctions imposed to prevent oligarchs bypassing economic sanctions.
Changpeng Zhao, the chief executive of Binance, told BBC Radio 4 that he has no intention of blocking Russian users from accessing his site.
Given it seems like Bitcoin is being viewed as some sort of store of value by Russians as the rouble nosedives, Western intervention into crypto seems inevitable.
However, data from Chainanalysis, a blockchain analytics firm, found that rouble-denominated crypto trading volume was at US$34.1mln on 3 March, half of what it was on 24 February at US$70.7mln.
Ozkardeskaya believes that Bitcoin, as a result, is “headed toward the US$40,000 mark, and it’s likely we start seeing Bitcoin trade parallel to the risk assets yet again.”
Cryptos had briefly moved away from mirroring the stock markets as the two had become closely linked over the course of the last year or so.
In the altcoins, Terra fell 0.80% to US$92.13, Solana fell 8.33% to US$81.73 and Avalanche dropped 7.31% to US$76.85.
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