Russia has seen a surge in interest as shown in the data from Bitcoin (BTC) marketplace Paxful. The recent data has shown a 350% surge in year-over-year basis.
Paxful is seeing average monthly trading volume of $4M in Russia, according to a recent study. The company says that this number “exceeds expectations,” together with the YoY usage increase figures.
In the past three months it has seen a surge of 42%. The month of May recorded the best performance due to the pandemic situation. In fact, the virus has helped it grow
Ray Youssef, CEO of Paxful, in an interview to Cointelegraph gave details about how the platform has been working in the last few months.
“COVID-19 also brought about a wave of financial insecurity globally, which contributed to more peer-to-peer interactions within the crypto sector.”
Youssef recalled the experience of Russians during the economic downturn in 1998, when people tried to withdraw cash unsuccessfully, as “the banks seemed to have dried up.” A turn to BTC could “be to offset any economic damages” that could occur due to the pandemic, he said.
The manager of Paxful to Russian market said that, Russia has “always had a monolithic banking system,” which is encouraging citizens to look for alternative ways to participate in the financial markets such as crypto P2P trading.
