Russia and its suggestion of Bitcoin as payment for gas and oil trigger cryptocurrencies to reach $2 trillion

The cryptocurrency market may have found the catalyst that experts were hoping for to come out of its long consolidation and for Bitcoin to break through the huge resistance of $45,500 / $46,000 once and for all. The mere mention of Bitcoin as a means of payment in exchange for Russian oil and gas, by a country that will only accept Turkish lira, yuan, rubles and, of course, gold has been a revulsive for these assets, which continue to extend their recent highs.

Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin has surpassed $44,000 for the first time since early March and is up 8% in the past seven days, according to data from CoinMarketCap, while total capitalization has breached the $2 trillion mark, a level not seen since mid-February. Technical analysis continues to indicate that the price level to overcome is at the aforementioned control zone, which has halted any attempt to return to $50,000 for the market's most traded crypto asset, that it has failed to recapture since the beginning of January.

As for the rest of the tokens, Ethereum has accumulated gains of 12% since last week and seems more likely to overtake its next resistance, at $3,200, which will leave Ether - the Ethereum network unit - one step away from its most important control zone, $3,500. The second most traded cryptocurrency, due to its change of protocol to proof-of-stake, less polluting, fast and scalable, is also encouraging investors.

However, the news coming from Russia and statements about Bitcoin are generating optimism among market participants as, if materialized, it would mean a real use case for the cryptographic token, as donations to the Ukrainian government in digital currencies already were. In fact, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink himself indicated in his letter to shareholders that he believes the Russia-Ukraine war will accelerate its adoption.

As Fink noted, the armed conflict could end up accelerating digital currencies as a tool for settling international transactions, as it challenges the forces that have governed the globalization of the past three decades. "A carefully designed global digital payments system can improve the settlement of international transactions while reducing the risk of money laundering and corruption," he explained.

Also, the world's largest asset manager acknowledged it is studying digital currencies and stablecoins due to growing client interest.

Other experts, however, throw a number of questions into the air. "How long will the West, which recently did not want to impose restrictions on Bitcoin, tolerate Russia circumventing sanctions through cryptocurrency?" questioned Ipek Ozkardeskaya, an analyst at Swissquote. "Could the West ban Russian Bitcoin as it did Russian gold? And if so, is it possible to ban 'Russian' Bitcoin?" he argued.