Veteran investor Mark Mobius said the recent rally in bitcoin can be attributed to Russians buying the cryptocurrency.
“I wouldn’t be a buyer, but if I were a Russian, I would be a buyer,” Moebius told CNBC’s Capital Connection on Tuesday.
“I would say that is why bitcoin is showing its power now — because the Russians have a way to get paid, to extract their fortune,” said Mobius, co-founder of Mobius Capital Partners.
Bitcoin Prices rose 10% on Monday as sanctions were imposed on Russian institutions, including banks, in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Since the invasion began on Thursday, transactions on the central bitcoin exchange are in both the Russian ruble and the Ukrainian hryvnia It rose to its highest level in months. According to crypto data company Kaiko.
Bitcoin was trading around $43,327 in the early hours of Tuesday morning ET.
The United States responded to Moscow’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine with several rounds of sanctions on Russian banks, its central bank, the country’s sovereign debt, Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Over the weekend, the United States, European allies and Canada agreed to isolate major Russian banks from the interbank messaging system, SWIFT, which connects more than 11,000 banks and financial institutions in more than 200 countries and territories.
The White House too The pursuit of the personal wealth of Russian billionairesrecently announced the creation of a business team targeting their profitable assets, including yachts and mansions.
Without bitcoin, Mobius said, Russians would be “really in trouble with all the shutdowns of the different ways to transfer money abroad.”
Ari Redboard, of blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, also told CNBC on Tuesday that Russia will turn to cryptocurrencies in an effort to evade sanctions.
However, cryptocurrencies cannot be used “on a scale that can come anywhere close to solving the sanctions issue,” said Redboard, the company’s head of legal and government affairs.
“There is no liquidity there to make a real impact in terms of what Russia is facing now,” he said.
Redbord also said that most of the liquidity is on large cryptocurrency exchanges that have “strong compliance controls” in place to monitor transactions that would lead to suspicious activity reports.
Where to invest amid geopolitical tensions
Mobius urged investors to diversify their portfolios and buy some gold as geopolitical tensions spread across the markets.
He said, “Gold is a place you should be, as I mentioned for a long time, it is very important to have some physical gold.”
Gold, traditionally considered a safe haven in times of uncertainty, rose more than 6% in February. Spot gold was last traded at around $1,908 an ounce.
Mobius also advised European investors to start diversifying from Europe to the US and some Asian markets. “This is a very good lesson in diversification,” he said.
pan europe Stokes 600 It lost 4.6% in the last month, and the German DAX is down 5.6% in the same period, according to FactSet data.
Abigail Ng, Tanaya Machel and CNBC’s Brian Schwartz contributed to this report.
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