Ukraine and Russia turn to crypto as war rages on
Data from CryptoCompare shows that the price of Bitcoin moved up throughout last week after initially dipping from $39,000 to $38,000. The cryptocurrency’s price has since steadily moved upward to now trade at $41,300.
Ethereum’s Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, moved in a similar way, starting the week around $2,500 and moving up to test the $3,000 mark throughout it. At the time of writing, ETH is trading at $2,900.
Headlines in the cryptocurrency space last week focused on how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to increased cryptocurrency adoption in both countries. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed into law a bill named “On Virtual Assets” that was approved by the country’s parliament a month ago. It established a legal framework for the country to operate a regulated crypto market.
Cryptocurrency exchanges and companies handling cryptoassets will now be required to register with the government to legally operate in Ukraine, while banks will be allowed to open accounts for crypto firms.
The law also allows Ukraine’s National Securities and Stock Market Commission to determine the country’s policies on crypto assets and act as a financial watchdog. Notably, Ukraine already ranked fourth in Chainalysis’ 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index before the move.
Ukraine’s parliament passed a law legalising cryptocurrencies back in September as well, but at the time President Zelensky vetoed the bill saying the country couldn’t afford an ew regulatory body to manage it. Ukraine has received over $100 million in cryptocurrency donations after it started accepting them last month.
Meanwhile, Russia’s central bank granted Sberbank – its largest bank – a license to issue and exchange digital assets. Using its platform, companies can now issue their own digital assets, attract market investments, or make other digital asset-related transactions.
Sberbank is a state-owned bank that is being sanctioned by the US and the European Union. It holds the largest share of savings deposits in Russia and is the main creditor of the country’s economy.
The move comes after the central bank of Russia warned that cryptocurrencies could be used for illegal activity.
While some have suggested cryptocurrencies could be used to circumvent sanctions, that scenario has gotten unlikelier over the week as Bitcoin mixing service CoinJoin announced it is now blacklisting BTC tied to illegal activity in a move that has been derided by crypto privacy advocates.
The blacklisting will apply to those using the zkSNACKs coordinator run by the Wasabi Wallet team. The blacklisting won’t apply to anyone using alternative coordinators. In a statement, Wasabi Wallet developer Rafe noted the move is meant to protect the company and project “by minimising the amount of these hackers and scammers using the coordinator and getting us in trouble”.
Instagram to add support for NFTs
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta – formerly known as Facebook – has revealed that Instagram, the company’s video and photo-sharing application, is set to add support for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
In an appearance at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, Zuckerberg said that the company is “working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term”. The CEO added he was not ready to announce what NFT will look like in the Metaverse or Instagram yet, but suggested that over time users may be able to mint their own NFTs on these platforms as well.
Similarly, in its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report, GameStop revealed it plans to launch a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace by the end of July. The firm partnered with layer-2 system Immutable X to launch its NFT plans earlier this year.
The partnership, GameStop said, would provide it with up to $150 million in Immutable X IMX tokens upon achievement of specific milestones. The video game retailer has also said it hired people in Q4 with experience in areas including blockchain gaming and e-commerce.
When GameStop first announced its NFT marketplace it said it expected to include “billions of low-cost, in-game assets.”
EU parliament rejects proof-of-work proposal
Over the week, the European Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee voted on a proposal that could have effectively banned the popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin across the European Union, as well as other Proof-of-Work (PoW) cryptoassets.
The committee rejected the move, voting 30-23 on Monday to keep the provision that would ban BTC out of a draft of the proposed Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) framework. The document proposed a phase-out plan for popular cryptocurrencies using PoW, which was meant to shift their consensus mechanisms to other less energy-intensive methods like proof-of-stake.
In the US, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected NYDIG and Global X’s applications to list spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), citing concerns around fraud, manipulation, and valuation methodology.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler has indicated numerous times he prefers to see bitcoin futures ETFs being traded over funds that would hold the cryptocurrency directly. The regulator has recently also rejected spot bitcoin ETF applications from Fidelity, VanEck, WisdomTree, Kryptoin, and First Trust.
Francisco Memoria is a content creator at CryptoCompare who’s in love with technology and focuses on helping people see the value digital currencies have. His work has been published in numerous reputable industry publications. Francisco holds various cryptocurrencies.
Featured image via Unsplash.