The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues as conflict riddles major cities in the country. As part of the counteracting measures, the European Union, the US, as well as other geopolitical powerhouses from around the world sanctioned Russia, pledging to cut off major banks from the SWIFT system, causing economic mayhem and reported bank runs in the country.
Amid all this, the Bitcoin-Ruble trading volume soared to levels last seen in May 2021. The price of BTC surged last night, while futures indices are somewhat hesitant, revealing an interesting short-term decoupling.
Bitcoin Price Surges to $44K
The past 24 hours were particularly turbulent in the cryptocurrency market, and, fortunately, this time, it was for the better.
Most of the charts are painted green, and BTC is leading the way, up 13% in a day. The cryptocurrency increased to slightly above $44,000 but has since retraced to where it currently trades at $43.4K.
As CryptoPotato reported earlier today, this left over $300 million worth of liquidations, and it was the highest daily increase in the BTC price since February 2021.
This increase also led to a massive surge in the entire cryptocurrency market, which gained around $200 billion in a day. Interestingly enough, BTC and the altcoins are somewhat decoupled to what happens on traditional futures markets at the time of this writing.
Wall Street Futures Hesitant
Major futures indices are trading mostly flat in the past 24 hours, perhaps amid growing continuous uncertainty surrounding the war between Ukraine and Russia.
The S&P 500 futures are 0.24% down, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is 0.49% down, and Nasdaq (IDX) is trading flat.
This decoupling comes at a time when the Bitcoin-Ruble trading volume has surged to a high not seen since May last year. It appears that the fears of the increasing toll of economic sanctions on Russia are ramping up, and people are turning to cryptocurrencies as some sort of an alternative. Of course, it’s far too early to determine if that’s the case, and it’s more of speculation at the time of this writing.
Although, it’s also worth noting that the addresses that hold over 100 BTC and over 1,000 BTC skyrocketed according to data from Glassnode, indicating massive whale accumulation.