Trading volumes between the British pound and the cryptocurrency bitcoin spiked to a record high after sterling dropped on Monday, according to market data firm Kaiko Research, in what analysts said was likely a rush by investors to dump their sterling for the digital asset or profit from arbitrage.
The pound fell to a record low against the dollar on Monday, having plunged the previous Friday after the UK government announced unfunded tax cuts.
The volume of transactions in the bitcoin-sterling trading pair across eight major exchanges globally spiked to a record high of 846 million pounds ($920 million) on Monday, according to Kaiko Research, compared with an average of around 54.1 million pounds a day so far in 2022.
The surge was likely due to traders swapping sterling for bitcoin, said James Butterfill, head of research at crypto firm CoinShares.
“There is a high correlation to bitcoin volume growth and political/monetary instability,” he said.
Butterfill said spikes have previously occurred in other currencies’ crypto trading volumes, such as the Russian ruble and Ukrainian hryvnia, but that he had never seen such big moves in the bitcoin-sterling pair’s volume.
Conor Ryder, research analyst at Kaiko, said the data suggests cryptocurrency markets reacted to the volatility in fiat currencies. When sterling crashed on Sept. 26, “opportunistic investors rushed to crypto exchanges offering BTC-GBP to try and profit via arbitrage from any mispricing of bitcoin across the major fiat currencies,” he said in emailed comments.
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