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Bitcoin has risen sharply in recent .months, especially accelerating since March 12 amid problems in the U.S. and European banking sectors. It has risen by more than a third in that time, reaching $28,000 on March 21, its highest level since last June. Other cryptocurrencies followed in the same direction. This rapid rise was the first time in a very turbulent year for cryptocurrencies, when they were mostly losing value. Izvestia analyzed why bitcoin was more stable than oil and financial sector stocks this time around.

Triumph after disaster
The rise was paradoxical because at the first signals of crisis in the global economy, digital currencies always entered a bear market, repeating the trajectory of emerging market currencies and commodities - thereby refuting the enthusiasts' idea that cryptocurrencies are insurance against economic turmoil.

2022 was a disastrous year for the cryptocurrency industry. Within a year, rates of major virtual currencies collapsed 3-4 times. Several major investment companies and trading platforms collapsed, such as the FTX exchange. It turned out that in the face of real problems in financial markets, with rising interest rates, inflation and the threat of recession, cryptocurrencies offer no protection, remaining essentially either a speculative toy, a niche tool for gray transactions, or a means of accumulation and settlement for individual blockchain enthusiasts. If the market falls, so does cryptocurrency, which means it makes no sense for a wide range of investors.

Market decline
But in March 2023, there was a new twist that surprised many analysts. On March 10, California-based Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) began experiencing a series of problems. It soon became clear that the lending institution, where half of Silicon Valley's companies held deposits, was insolvent, and the situation was so bad that SVB simply could not find a buyer for any money.

The situation was close to disaster in other major banks in the U.S., and a new "Lehman Brothers moment" was in the air (whose collapse led to an acute phase of the global financial crisis). Later the situation spread to Europe, where regulators orchestrated a "voluntary-forced" takeover of Credit Suisse, Switzerland's second-largest bank, by UBS. It hadn't yet reached the panic of September 2008, but the collapse of stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic was simply epic. Banks pulled many commodities with them, for example Brent crude plummeted to nearly $70 a barrel. In short, all segments collapsed with few exceptions.

Virtual Assay Gold.
Cryptocurrencies have been one such exception. Over the past 10 days, bitcoin has risen about 35% and etherium 20%. At the same time, the most popular cryptocurrency has risen from $16,500 to more than $28,000 since the beginning of the year. Markets haven't seen such a powerful rise since 2021.

Bitcoin
Bitcoin's surge was supported only by assets such as U.S. government bonds and other top government borrowers, as well as gold crossing the $2,000 per troy ounce mark.

A separate story is some non-Western stock markets, like Russia, which also had its share of bad weeks in March. But in all cases, the gains were much more modest. It turned out that cryptocurrencies in the current chaos in world exchanges simply became a "safe haven" where you can wait out the storm.

Some investors picked up on this growth. Their voice was one of the former heads of the leading exchange Coinbase (which, incidentally, is thinking about moving amid the "unfriendliness" of the U.S. to cryptocurrencies) Balaji Srinivasan, who said that bitcoin "does not protect against inflation, but protects against hyperinflation," which may come as a result of the liquidation of the new banking crisis. According to him, bitcoin should be worth a million dollars: gold once ruled the world economy, but now virtual gold will take its place.

The growth that was not expected
There is nothing new and original in such reasoning (as well as in objections to it), but the phenomenon of cryptocurrency growth in March 2023 is really interesting and contradicts everything we've seen before. According to Leonid Delitsyn, an analyst at Finam Financial Group, the fundamental reason for bitcoin's rise in price is the problems of the traditional economy, which sp

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