Despite its volatility -which increased this week with the Fed's decision on interest rates-, one of the main winners of the latest turmoil was cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin, the flagship of this sector, has risen close to 15% in the last month and recovered positions to
exceed US$ 28,000 this Friday
.
Two conjunctural factors in Argentina were added to this increase in international prices:
inflationary escalation and a renewed exchange rate tension.
In this context, the main crypto wallets in the local market saw
an increase in movements and even registered new user registrations.
Consulted by
Clarín
, the majority acknowledged that the movements registered in the last ten days were less than those generated in the last exchange run in July last year, but that there were
certain "peaks".
Julián Colombo, CEO of Bitso
, explained: "In recent weeks, not only has the price of bitcoin risen, but there has also been an acceleration in the rise in the price of the dollar," he said, adding: "The increase
in the price of bitcoin added to that of the blue dollar led to an increase in activity
on the platform, both in the number of users and in volume traded".
A similar situation occurred
in the
Lemon wallet.
"Among the companies affected by the events in Silicon Valley was Circle, the issuer of the stablecoin cryptocurrency $USDC. It suffered a
de-peg
(loss of parity) over the weekend since it had 8% of the support of the crypto in the bank. In Lemon it operated normally during the weekend (purchase, sale, exchange, deposits and withdrawals) and
the volume operated in exchange of currencies was multiplied by 9
against the previous weekend, "they explained.
"Faced with this scenario and the fall of various bank shares and Wall Street prices in general, many people saw in bitcoin the potential to be the
quintessential
store of value and
a decentralized currency
that does not depend on any entity," they summarized.
Many savers see cryptocurrencies as a
way to "protect" themselves
against fear of a new crisis in the "traditional" financial sector.
The Fed's rate hike this Wednesday did not dampen the appetite for crypto.
"In the first weekend we saw
15% withdrawals
, something similar to what happened during the FTX crisis last year," said Manuel Beaudroit, creator of Beloapp, who added that with the passing of days the number of operations it normalized.
The Silicon Valley Bank crisis
The bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) two weeks ago unleashed
a real crisis
in the international financial sector, which had its counterpart in the crypto ecosystem.
SVB also provided banking services to Circle, issuer of the USDC stablecoin.
The company had approximately $3.3 billion on deposit with the bank, which is equivalent to around 8% of the reserves backing the stablecoin.
Shortly after Circle announced its SVB exposure grade, USDC lost parity, valuing below $1 for the entire post-crash weekend.
This triggered a
systemic liquidation of various positions across the entire crypto ecosystem.
A survey published by Chainalysis indicated that the volume of cryptocurrencies leaving centralized services (CEX) skyrocketed after the start of the crisis, reaching a maximum of US$1.2 billion on March 11.
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