Key Insights:
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The value of Russia’s Ruble against the United States Dollar is worth less than a cent.
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To prevent a further collapse, the Russian Central Bank raised the interest rates to 20% from 9.5%
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Bitcoin purchases against the Russian Ruble rose to $1.5 billion in a single day.
The imposition of sanctions, elimination of Russia from SWIFT, European Union’s ban of Central Bank’s transactions is already beginning to affect the country’s economy.
In less than 24 hours after the US announced its sanctions and the decision of removing Russia from SWIFT, Ruble tumbled.
Russia Loses Ruble’s Value
One Ruble was worth about 1.2 cents or $0.012 until a few hours ago. Then, however, due to the invasion of Ukraine worsening and considering the response from the world, its value fell.
Plunging by a mind-boggling 21.29% is currently worth less than a cent at $0.009.
The broader impact of this fall of value is that the Central Bank raised its key interest rates. In addition, as the Ruble’s value collapses, Russia is taking steps to avoid hyperinflation.
And for the same reason, the Bank raised its interest rates on deposits to 20%, which is higher than most of Russia’s securities and stocks.
Furthermore, the Bank is looking into ways to fight the ban and elimination from SWIFT.
Since the country cannot access any of its 14 trillion Rubles and the $1.1 trillion forex reserves, it is looking at another way. Incentivizing investors with a 20% interest rate is a step in that direction.
The State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), Nikolai Arefiev, even went on to say:
“If they block all the funds that are abroad, then the government will have no choice but to seize all the deposits of the population – there are about 60 trillion rubles – in order to get out of the situation”
Thus to save money, as predicted by FXEmpire, the citizens have officially begun to turn to crypto. Data from Coindesk – Kaiko shows that over 1.5 billion Rubles worth of Bitcoin in Rubles pair was traded in just 24 hours.
Russia Continues Fighting
Recently, the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine appealed to every cryptocurrency exchange around the world to block and freeze the addresses of Russian and Belarusian politicians and the citizens of Russia and “sabotage” them.
As the war worsens, problems for Ukrainian and Russian people will increase as their lifestyle gets much more expensive.
One can only pray that neither of the countries’ citizens ends up paying a wheelbarrow of money to buy one loaf of bread.
This article was originally posted on FX Empire
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