I have a few theories…
1 — no one really gives a shit about Ukraine (it’s all virtue signaling anyway), and has bought the scare.
2 — the large hedge funds, banks, and the usual Pelosi-types already bought the crash after shaking out all the retail investors due to the Russia, Russia, Russia insanity in the media.
3 — covid is now the thing of the past, the Fed has been given the ‘out’ to raise interest rates, so retail are now buying back into the market
BUT … the oddity is both Gold and BTC is up by a very large amount.
Gold +1%
BTC +10%
All this in the backdrop of sanctions and the cutting off of Russia from the DS financial system.
I smell a crypto bear trap. Get Russians and others to FOMO into it then dive the price. They've been doing this over and over
A little more nuanced currently. They have yanked certain Russian banks from the SWIFT system, BUT, they are still allowed to use SWIFT for their current commodity exports... which is the bulk of their trade.
So really, this SWIFT action is a complete nothing-burger. It's a theatrical play by the EU and US to impose tough words onto Russia.
On the other hand, Russia does have their own messaging system (vs SWIFT) which they would use for trade with China, and now there is talk with India to settle transactions with Rupees.
Russia (and their trade allies) are looking to move away from the Petro-Dollar... this is why the DS is super scared.
Russia also sold off nearly all of their US securities over the past 10 years and has been stockpiling gold. They've been preparing for this.
I have a little of Stellar, Algo, Tezos and ATOM as side-bets in a cold wallet. I had ditched Cardano last year as they were too busy going around doing woke shit in Africa rather than improving the tech and delivering on promises.
Russia in all in on Bitcoin, the only non-controlled crypto worldwide. All the other Alts are either centralized 'securities' that can be controlled or are not at scale (adoption, network, nodes, mining, ...).
Ripple is not XRP, many in the crypto-sphere think they are one in the same, they are very, very different and have nothing to do with each other.
Russia has been stacking Gold like mad, Putin knew what was up... he may be positioning his country to trade using Bitcoin as a settlement layer.