According to the Russian Central Bank, there has been a noticeable increase in the amount of transactions made by citizens on peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading platforms and exchanges.
Per the Russian media outlet RBC, the bank has published a financial stability report, making several observations on Russian citizens’ crypto transactions.
The bank discussed trends it observed between the first quarter of FY2024 and the fourth quarter of FY2023.
The regulator reported that, “compared to the second and third quarters of 2023,” there was a 16.4% increase in “total web traffic of Russian users on the websites of the largest cryptocurrency platforms.”
Russian Central Bank: Citizens More Active on Crypto Platforms
According to the bank, 104.6 million visits to P2P and cryptocurrency exchange websites were made by Russians.
According to the bank, there was a 15.1% increase in the average monthly count of distinct Russian IP address holders to “major crypto exchanges.”
According to the bank, this indicates that 7% of all traffic on these significant international cryptocurrency exchanges comes from Russia.
Still, this falls short of the bank’s reported 9% peak from the first quarter of FY2023.
The bank claimed to have performed its computations using a program called Transparent Blockchain.
The Federal Financial Monitoring Service, also known as Rosfinmonitoring, created the tool in an effort to combat money laundering using cryptocurrency.
According to Russian officials, Transparent Blockchain enables them to determine the “real” identity of cryptocurrency users across various blockchain protocols.
The Russian Parliament proposes to ban the organization of cryptocurrency circulation in Russia from September 1, 2024, as well as the advertising of cryptocurrencies. Only miners and projects approved by the Central Bank will be able to obtain the right. However, this proposal…
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) April 29, 2024
According to the report, Russians are still interested in larger-cap cryptoassets like Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC). They also seem to be using stablecoins that are pegged to the USD, such as USDT and USDC.
Over $50.2 billion worth of transactions were “potentially attributable” to Russians overall during that time.
Analysts pointed out that this covers P2P payments, remittances, and “payments for goods and services” in addition to cryptocurrency trades.
Crypto Is Risky, Regulator Warns
A list of the cryptocurrency platforms that the Russian Central Bank has monitored is not published in the report, according to RBC.
It did note, though, that information from “previous Central Bank financial risk reports” had come from sites like Binance, Bybit, MEXC, KuCoin, and others.
The fact that Binance left the Russian market could be contributing factor to the increase in transactions.
The bank believes that Binance had approximately half of the Russian cryptocurrency market under control when it left the country.
Additionally, the bank alerted Russian cryptocurrency users to the “dangers” and “risks” associated with cryptocurrency ownership in Russia.
It stated that it was “important to evaluate the risks related to potential sanctions from hostile nations.”