Ukraine sees USDT premiums rising on Kuna exchange despite ongoing Russian invasion

Ukraine, which is known for being highly welcoming to new technologies, especially blockchain and cryptocurrency, has seen the price of Tether’s USDT stablecoin rising to 36.97 Ukrainian hryvnias (UAH) ($1.23) on Ukraine’s Kuna exchange on Thursday, despite the current Russian invasion. In the last 24 hours, the overall trading volume of all cryptocurrencies on the exchange was around $4.4 million.

Mid-market prices from exchange data provider XE showed that the UAH currency had only risen to a peak of 29.89 per US dollar during the same time period. To put it another way, the USDT conversion rate was substantially greater than ordinary UAH/USD trades.

The USDT is theoretically pegged at one-to-one. The USDT/UAH trading pair is now valued at 32.32 on Kuna. In comparison, other centralized exchanges, including Binance’s worldwide platform, are now trading USDT at its theoretical peg. However, according to data from Binance Ukraine, its USDT listing is trading at a premium of more than 7% to the Ukrainian hryvnia.

Ukraine wants peace

As TheCoinRise reported, Ukraine recently legalized Bitcoin despite the ongoing tension. When a country establishes its currency’s exchange rate, a black market emerges where users trade foreign currencies at values that reflect the current market situation.

NEW: Over $360k in #bitcoin has been donated to the Ukraine army in just one day 🇺🇦

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) February 24, 2022

Michael Chobanian, who is the founder of Kuna and also serves as president of the Blockchain Association of Ukraine, stated in a video posted on Thursday that the exchange is running normally and that banks are still operational despite the outages. 

Chobanian defined his nation as being in “full-time war” and announced the creation of a crypto fund to aid organizations assisting the Ukrainian Armed Forces and administration in their fight against Russian invasion. 

 “Let’s hope for peace,” Chobanian replied, “but if you want peace, you have to prepare for the war.”