Well, things have escalated quickly in Ukraine and Russia has initiated military operations against Ukraine. What is it doing to the markets? Well, take a look -
$35k is gone and I am very sure that $30k will be a reality soon
Real Gold reacting as it should, not true for digital gold
Market still pricing 4 rate hikes
Gold is winning US Dollar versus Gold right now
Markets are bleeding, to say the least. I doubt if anyone expected things to escalate this quickly. Maybe Joe Biden did, as he said a number of times in the past week. After Russia's threat was seen as a bluff by the West, Russia decided to hasten things. The result so far has not been good for investors.
The US and its allies have initiated sanctions against Russia.
The United States, the European Union, Britain, Australia, Canada, and Japan announced plans to target banks and wealthy individuals while Germany halted a major gas pipeline project from Russia
2 Russian banks have been blocked from US Treasury markets and their assets have been frozen by the US. Yesterday, the same sanctions would have become applicable to Russian elites and political leadership. The UK and EU have blocked their financial markets for certain Russian banks and also targeted Russian politicians and wealthy individuals. The list of wealthy individuals is quite small at the moment but a further round of sanctions could see that list increasing.
While blocking of financial markets does limit corporations from raising funds, and investors from off-loading stock, individuals can probably find a way to go around these sanctions. However, will these sanctions be enough to attract more Russian money to cryptocurrencies?
On Jan 25 of this year, Russia, after all, decided not to ban cryptocurrencies. Source Was this preparation for what is transpiring today?
Anyway, I do not think that any of these escalations will reduce in the coming weeks. In fact, things will only escalate till more sanctions are announced and then maybe some diplomatic negotiations will lead to the end of this conflict. However, if there are wealthy individuals in Russia who have not yet invested in Bitcoin, then this is the right time for them to explore.
I understand that this does not make for a good use case for Bitcoin. A bully decides to challenge a country's sovereignty and then Bitcoin should become a tool to avoid sanctions for Russian politicians. No, definitely not a use case. But how about those individuals, who will suffer as a result of these sanctions, and who had nothing to do with this escalation? A good enough use case in this scenario - If you've got a Head of the State that causes you economic harm from decisions you do not agree with, then avoid some of that using a decentralized digital asset.
Pre-2017, Chinese wealthy individuals were using cryptocurrencies to remit money out of the country because China had strict restrictions on outward remittances. Of course, recent crackdowns on protest organizers in Canada by a "liberal" Prime Minister by freezing bank accounts is an incredible example of why Bitcoin is necessary. Whatever happened in Canada was not an emergency for which Trudeau had to use emergency powers.
Sanctions and authoritative actions are a perfect case for why more people should be moving to Bitcoin. While the current situation will not help prevent a further drop in Bitcoin's price, it will surely do more value by pushing the Bitcoin adoption curve higher.