Russia:
Despite the ongoing uncertainty regarding digital currency legislation in the Russian Federation, the volume of bitcoin trades in the country hit an all-time high last week. A total of 193,450,980 Roubles of trades took place on LocalBitcoins in Russia, according to charts provided by
Coin.dance, which tracks LocalBitcoins activity in multiple countries.
Last month, deputy finance minister Alexei Moiseev told state-owned new outlet
Rossiyskaya Gazeta that Russian citizens may be allowed to use bitcoin as a foreign currency for transactions that take place outside the country. LocalBitcoins volumes in Russia have been rapidly rising since the beginning of 2016, even in the face of multiple bills proposing the outright ban of the digital currency in the country, so it’s difficult to tell of Moiseev’s comments last month have had any tangible impact on Russian investor confidence in bitcoin. Declining oil prices do not bode well for the Russian economy or currency. An alternative asset like bitcoin, which is beyond the iron grip of the Kremlin oligarchy, may explain the rising tide of interest in bitcoin coming out of Russia.
Thailand:
It’s common to see heightened interest in bitcoin inside developing countries when the price of the digital currency is in an upswing and the financial press is pumping out daily articles. But it is rare to see spikes in LocalBitcoins trading volumes when the price of the digital currency is declining, and that is precisely what last week’s all-time high reading shows: 10,552,220 Thai Baht worth of trades.
Venezuela:
The economic situation in Venezuela is getting worse by the week and the desperate citizenry has resorted to butchering zoo animals for meat, according to a report by
Inquisitr. The hyperinflation in Venezuela is now close to 700 percent and plunging oil prices aren’t helping either. Internet censorship in Venezuela has been taken to a whole new level by Maduro’s administration. As the
PanAmPost reports, 372 portals and 43 domains have been blocked by Venezuelan ISPs:
“Of those, 44 percent are web pages related to black market dollars. An additional 19 percent of the pages are news media and an additional 12 percent feature blogs critical of Nicolás Maduro’s administration.”
The country is now close to total collapse and LocalBitcoins volume in Venezuela hit another all-time high in the last week of July, surging to 117,116,539 Bolivars:
The big question in Venezuela is: Will the Maduro administration start blocking access to bitcoin-related domains like LocalBitcoins.com in the near future?
