Bitcoin Activity Soars Post SWIFT Ban On Russia, BTC At Do Or Die Spot?

Reynaldo Marquez

3 years ago

3 mins read

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Bitcoin has found temporal support at $39,000, but buyers have been scarce as the market enters into weekend price action. Uncertainty around macro factors seems to be growing with the Russia-Ukraine conflict contributing with the selling pressure experience by BTC and larger cryptocurrencies over the past days.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at $39,168 with a 4.2% loss in the past 24 hours.

The benchmark crypto saw some relief before the current downside action. Per a report from research firm Delphi Digital, Bitcoin activity boomed due to consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The United States, Europe, and the International Community decided to ban the Russian Federation from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), the communication rails used by banks in the legacy financial system. Effectively, making Russia a financial outsider.

As seen below, on March 1^st, when the sanctions were announced, Bitcoin’s active supply saw it largest surged since May 2020. At that time, the start of the lockdown measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 led global markets into a severe downtrend.

This uptick in Bitcoin active supply could suggest buyers increased their holdings to hedge against future events. At the same time, as reported by Brian Armstrong and other crypto exchange CEOs, BTC and other cryptocurrencies have been used by people on the ground to safely transport wealth across borders.

Additional data provided by Delphi Digital seems to support this thesis as the BTC supply held by addresses with balances between 0.001 and 10 BTC stood above 2.73 million. The research firm added the following:

Cutting off the Russian Ruble from the world’s financial system led to a sell-off, causing it to drop 20% over the weekend. As Russians try to preserve value, BTC has emerged as one of the options. This caused BTC to trade at an eye-popping 40% premium.

Bitcoin At Make It Or Break It Moment?

As NewsBTC reported yesterday, Bitcoin needed to hold above $40,000 to prevent further downside. Now, with critical support lost, a potential revisit of $36,000 seems likely.

Data from Material Indicators seems to support this thesis, at least for lower timeframes, as there seems to be low liquidity at current levels at up to that price point. As seen in the chart below, there are around $18 million in bids orders for BTC at $36,000.

Until that point, any levels seem weak, for the short term. To the upside, the order book seems equally thin, but without buying pressure it seems unlikely that BTC’s price will make a push upwards, for the time being.

According to a pseudonym analyst, BTC’s price benefited from the “safe haven asset narrative”, but that momentum seems to have been extinguished. Talking about the potential opportunity to buy BTC’s dip into future lows, giving the asset’s possible capacity to reclaim previous highs, the analyst said:

(…) we’d need a push above $46K to continue it’s bullish trend which won’t be easy either after such a fall (…). As for $BTC’s direction I’m a bit conflicted on what’s next. Until we lose the current level I still have some hope for a reversal but the bulls really have to pull through after the weekend. As for the weekend I expect mostly chop as usual.

Reynaldo Marquez

A literature major, Reynaldo Márquez has been deeply immersed in the crypto industry since 2017. His journey began with translating articles for various crypto news outlets, a role he took on with zeal. In 2018, amidst a challenging market, he embraced his first writing assignment, demonstrating his unwavering commitment to the nascent industry and the promise of change it bears for many people worldwide.
In March 2021, he joined the prestigious crypto news outlet NewsBTC and Bitcoinist, where he not only reported on the latest crypto news but also had the privilege of interviewing some of the industry's most influential figures. A year later, his dedication and hard work were recognized, and he was promoted to Managing Editor, a position he currently holds with pride.
He believes in honesty, good communication, hard work, and the power of cryptocurrency and its potential to transform people's lives, especially those alienated by the legacy financial system. Born in 1992 in Venezuela, Reynaldo is familiar with how governments and central banks can negatively affect people, their everyday lives, and their futures by creating inflation and erasing their hopes for a better future. Thus, like many Venezuelans, he embraced this new technology to help him and his family navigate difficult times.
In another life, Reynaldo would have pursued a career as an investigator, most likely tracking down the origins of the Cyberpunk movement with the publication of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer.’ The intersection between fiction and reality, with the materialization of Bitcoin in 2009, would have allowed him to dive deep into the crypto sphere as something more than a financial phenomenon but also a cultural shift in society that was brewing since the XX century, and maybe even sooner, in the XIX century with the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience.’
But that’s for another life. In this one, Reynaldo has been trading to improve his trading skills. Since 2023, he has been trying to learn Python to create successful strategies and find ways to execute them. It is a difficult task, which continues to keep him busy today and will most likely continue to keep him busy in the near and long term.
In his free time, he enjoys lifting heavy objects, reading, watching movies, and listening to his favorite music. Some of his favorite authors are Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Mario Vargas Llosa, Reinaldo Arenas, Rafael Cadenas, and many others. Lately, he has been primarily interested in reading about dystopic societies, a topic that deeply resonates with the crypto industry.
Since 2023, he has lived in Spain with his wife. He loves the weather, the food, and the people and their culture. They both expect to travel much more within the country they now call home and beyond its border. He hopes to retire with his wife, maybe in a quiet place near a beach, but most likely in a city close to a library and a university with his kids and, hopefully, grandkids.

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