The world has been in chaos over the last week, but the cryptocurrency market seems to have recovered from an initial plummet. LUNA surged ahead, increasing a massive 67.4% in value — and ANC wasn’t far behind, with a price increase of 66.5%.
There were a fair few cryptocurrencies that performed badly too. CVX went down 24.7%, BIT by 16.7%, and HEART by 12.9%. Many others saw substantial declines.
Yet it was good news for investors of the big names. The BTC price increased by 5.6%, ETH by 6.7%, and SOL by 5.1%, with various others also enjoying a successful week.
At first, you might think the state of the world right now has little to do with the world of cryptocurrencies, but they’ve actually featured in many major stories. Russian-born Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has made headlines for his comments against the Russian regime.
BTC’s price dropped at first amid the madness — proving that it’s far from being a safe haven asset like gold, which reached high points when the news of war loomed. However, BTC’s price recovered after the first few days, as reflected by its net increase over the last week.
Interestingly, the cryptocurrency tether (USDT) fared a little better, with its value surpassing $1 on a major Ukrainian exchange. This shows that stablecoins may indeed have a solid use case as an alternative to the dollar.
Meanwhile, the Russian government has made moves to restrict crypto trading, following in the footsteps of China. Now, Russian residents can only use a select few cryptocurrency wallets and platforms, and comprehensive financial reporting must take place.
Yet not everything in the news last week relates to the conflict roaring on. One of the biggest stories came from LUNA, the native cryptocurrency of the blockchain payments platform that unexpectedly enjoyed a significant price gain toward the end of last week.
Another big headline was Ethereum’s upgrade. The leading blockchain protocol’s need for greater scalability has been talked about a lot recently, with competitors like Solana and Avalanche gaining more traction.