The volume of ruble-denominated cryptocurrency trading appears to be continuing to decline despite regulators’ confidence that digital assets are being used to circumvent sanctions, Bloomberg writes.

As of March 18, ruble-denominated cryptocurrency trading volume had fallen by more than half from a recent peak of about $70 million on March 7, according to data from analytics firm Chainalysis.

The total volume of bitcoin traded globally averages $20-40 billion daily.

The President of the European Central Bank (ECB) Christine Lagarde on the eve indicated that there are signs that indicate that Russian citizens are trying to circumvent sanctions using cryptocurrency. However, she did not provide specific examples.

Chainalysis data shows only potential activity of Russian investors in the field of cryptocurrency transactions on cryptocurrency exchanges, said Madeleine Kennedy, Chainalysis senior director of communications. They do not include information about all transactions in the blockchain.

In turn, Kaiko’s data indicates that activity with Tether’s rouble-denominated stablecoins has declined from a peak of about $38 million reached on March 7. As of March 22, the figure was less than $5 million.

The company also notes that only three global cryptocurrency exchanges offer RUB-denominated cryptocurrency trading, namely Binance, Yobit and LocalBitcoins.

Meanwhile, Elliptic earlier reported that it had discovered a digital wallet that may belong to Russian officials and businessmen under sanctions and be used to transfer information to the authorities.