During Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions, the role of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin was a key point of discussion.
Three big questions have been thrown up about how it is being used and what the future holds.
Russia has been hit with a number of economic sanctions in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
The US has placed a number of Russian figures and financial institutions on a sanctions list that makes it difficult for American firms to do business with them. The United States, European allies and Canada have removed key Russian banks from an interbank messaging system which makes it harder for them to access global financial markets.
The Russian ruble has fallen because of the sanctions.
This has led to a debate about whether cryptocurrencies could be used to evade sanctions.
Digital currencies are often not issued or controlled by a central bank. The traditional route of financial plumbing does not apply when the coin is sent to other users.
There are many challenges.
A public ledger of activity is what the technology that underpins bitcoin is called. It is possible to track the movements of funds from one account to another. It isn't a good tool for avoiding sanctions.
The biggest misconception is that it is untraceable, which is not the case, according to the vice president of corporate development and international at Lu.
There isn't enough money for Russian companies to move.
It's difficult to move large amounts of money usingcryptocurrencies because they are still a fraction of the global currency market.
The exchanges will be on high alert.
Exchanges that operate with strong processes and codes of conduct will no doubt be more vigilant for funds that have bad origins.
Many of these points were backed up in a thread on Thursday by Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase. He said that businesses have to follow the law.
It doesn't matter if your company handles dollars, gold, real estate or non financial assets. All US people and businesses are subject to sanctions laws.
It would be a mistake to think that businesses like Coinbase won't follow the law. We will. This is why we screen people who sign up for our services against global watchlists, and block transactions from IP addresses that might belong to sanctioned individuals or entities, just like any other regulated financial services business.
There has been a spike in the volume of transactions from ruble into bitcoins and tether, a stable coin tied to the U.S. dollar. As the ruble has plunged, Hayter said this is a flight to the dollar by any means possible.
Some ordinary Russians are usingcryptocurrencies as a way to survive the collapse of their currency.
Lawmakers, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, urged the Treasury Department to make sure that the companies in the cryptocurrencies are in compliance with the sanctions on Russia. A U.S. government official said that it was unlikely that Russia could use cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions.
The scale that the Russian state would need to successfully circumvent all U.S. and partners would almost certainly render cryptocurrencies useless for the state.
For years, proponents of the digital currency have been calling it "digital gold." The idea is that it is a store of value and could be a safe haven in times of turmoil.
In recent years, the theory of correlation between risk assets and particular stocks has been dismantled.
As the war in Ukraine intensified this week, it was suggested that it was time for bitcoin to become a safe haven asset.
Several experts disagreed.
We've read across a few different publications that BTC is regaining its status as a safe-haven. In a note on Thursday, the head of trading and account management at BCB Group said they completely disagreed with the notion.
During times of market turbulence, a safe haven is an asset that retains its value. Since it was clear the Fed was going to hike rates faster than anticipated, the stock market sold off. This is not a safe haven.
Ayyar said in the past week that he believes that the use case for bitcoin is positive, as it is related to equities and gold.
Proponents of cryptocurrencies claim that the underlying blockchain can be used to have more efficient and traceable transactions. The reason is that there is no middleman to move money.
High fees and slow transaction speed are still a problem for many cryptocurrencies. They haven't seen mass adoption for things like payments.
During the war,Ukraine began to accept donations via cryptocurrencies to fund its military. According to Elliptic, Ukraine has raised over $50 million using cryptocurrencies.
The high cost of sending money abroad makes it difficult to take donations via traditional banking methods. It could take a long time for Ukraine to receive money.
Garrick Hileman is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics.
When critical infrastructure is out or there are concerns about how quickly something can get through a traditional banking system, if you have internet and a computing device, you can transact. Hileman said that that has been one of the promises.
Hileman said that because the transactions are on a public ledger, you can see where the money goes after it is received.
He said that some of the original value proposition of cryptocurrencies are seeing validation.
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