Russian crypto investors have assets worth more than 16.5 trillion rubles ($214 billion) at their disposal. Such data is cited by Bloomberg with reference to the Kremlin's estimates received from unnamed sources.
This value is about 12% of the capitalization of the global cryptocurrency market and a third of the capitalization of Russian stock indices. The assessment was carried out last month based on an analysis of the IP addresses of users of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges and other sources. The head of the State Duma Committee on the financial market Anatoly Aksakov previously called the figure of 5 trillion rubles.
According to the Singapore-based payment firm TripleA, more than 17 million Russians or 12% of the country's population are holders of cryptocurrencies. 60% of this indicator belongs to the age category from 25 to 44 years. In addition, more than 500,000 programmers in the country work in the cryptocurrency industry, sources involved in the discussion of the upcoming regulation said.
They also noted that the given estimate is minimal, since many traders use a VPN to connect to cryptocurrency exchanges.
"The Russian crypto space is growing, more and more investors are appearing—" said Stas Koretsky, host of the investBRO podcast and a crypto investor since 2017. "These are mostly young people who don't understand the market and jumped on the hype."