Countries with unstable national currencies and high annual inflation like Russia & Venezuela have seen new records in volumes on LocalBitcoins - world’s most popular P2P digital currency trading site - on a weekly basis for the past few months.
New all-time high of 262,345,976 Russia rubles of turnover was recorded in Russia for the week ending 2016-10-08, according to data compiled by Coin.dance. This record comes despite the Roskomnadzor blockade of LocalBitcoins domains to Russian citizens on September 11, 2016:
Bitcoin trading is continuing to increase in Venezuela as the the national currency - the Venezuelan bolivar - is essentially worthless and the IMF has named the Venezuelan economy the worst in the world. For the week ending 2016-10-08, LocalBitcoins volume in Venezuela hit an all-time high of 2,234,143 bolivars:
However, even countries with fairly stable currencies like Pakistan are starting to see surging volumes on LocalBitcoins. For last week, turnover in Pakistan came in at 8,830,777 Pakistani rupees. A new all-time high despite the stability of the Pakistani rupee against the US dollar, which has been hovering between 104-105 for most of 2016.
LocalBitcoins volume in Canada also surged to a new record last week of 361,716 CAD, eclipsing the previous high of 308,220 Canadian dollars in November of 2013. Turnover on LocalBitcoins in Canada has been climbing steadily over the last two years as slumping oil prices have had a very negative effect on the USD/CAD exchange rate.
Awareness of digital currencies has also grown in Canada as the number of BTMs (Bitcoin Teller Machines) has grown substantially over the past two years. Deloitte Canada recently unveiled its first BTM in one of their Toronto offices.
