Starting from April in Russia there has been an increase in the number of registrations on crypto exchanges and an increase in the trading volumes of bitcoin.
This is reported by the Russian newspaper RBC, which publishes data collected directly from the exchanges themselves.
For example, according to the head of Binance’s representative office in Russia, Gleb Kostarev, there was a significant increase in the number of registrations and user activities in March, April and May.
In April 2020 alone, the number of active users was twice as high as in December 2019, i.e. only four months earlier.
Kostarev said that in Russia the popularity of bitcoin futures exchanges is growing so much that in April and May the trading volumes of these tools were twice as high as in March, and even 5 times higher than in January.
In Russia, the lockdown due to the Covid19 emergency started at the end of March, so the first full month of domestic isolation was in April.
Moreover, the lockdown is still ongoing, although the restrictive measures were reduced in mid-May.
RBC also reports that during this crisis, customers of Russian banks have started to use their current accounts more actively, so the increase in bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading is part of a broader picture of increased interest in financial activities.
The founder of the Garantex exchange, Sergey Mendeleev, said that the increase in the number of users could be associated with increased interest from those with sufficient funds for high-risk investments.
However, according to a United Traders analyst, Fedor Anaschenkov, the lockdown would not be the only reason. In fact, there would be a correlation between the size of interest and price volatility.
In fact, comparing the interest in cryptocurrencies on Google Trends with price fluctuations, and trading volumes, it appears that at times of higher price volatility there is an increase in interest, which is also the case for trading volumes.
The biggest trading peaks occurred in March, when the biggest daily drop in recent times occurred, and in early May, when the BTC price returned to $10,000.
According to Anaschenkov, confidence in classic financial instruments in Russia is now compromised, both by retail and large investors, due to continuing economic uncertainty, and this is pushing them to become more and more interested in cryptocurrencies, which are less dependent on the macroeconomic situation.
More importantly, Anaschenkov believes that interest in cryptocurrencies will continue to grow if the price of bitcoin remains stable above $10,000.
