Currency Restrictions Push the Demand for Hardware Crypto Wallets in Russia

Currency Restrictions Push the Demand for Hardware Crypto Wallets in Russia

Hardware wallets designed to securely store cryptocurrencies have seen a huge surge this spring in Russia, on the backdrop of currency restrictions introduced due to Western financial sanctions. It is reported that Ledger and Tangem are the most popular products on the market.

Russians Buy More Hardware Crypto Wallets

Russian crypto users bought eight times more hardware wallets in March and April 2022 than in the previous two periods. The daily Vedomosti has reported, quoting the representatives of the Tangem wallet developer, the retail chain M.video-Eldorado, and the Ozon marketplace.

The report details how Ledger, which sells wallets resembling a USB stick, and Tangem, whose products are designed to take up the space of a bank card, have been the most popular brands among Russian consumers.

M.video-Eldorado started selling crypto wallets in the fall of 2021. It currently offers a single-currency and a multi-currency Tangem and a Ledger. The retailer observed a spike in the demand for these devices, and sales multiplied eight-fold in the first quarter of 2022.

According to Tangem, the significant increase in demand for its devices since the beginning of the year is also partially because the company introduced more affordable products to the market. The chain has confirmed that demand at M.video-Eldorado peaked in March when they were first offered.

Ozon also acknowledged that the wider range of products has led to a spike in demand. January witnessed a seven-fold increase in the available items, and in June the stock was six times more, reports Bits.media. The online marketplace noted that currency restrictions imposed by the Bank of Russia against the backdrop of Western financial sanctions have had an impact.

The CEO of Infoline-Analytics, Mikhail Burmistrov, has explained that the surge in wallet sales can also be attributed to the outflow of IT specialists from the Russian Federation. They bought cryptocurrencies and hardware wallets to transfer their savings abroad, Vedomosti reported.

The publication further indicated that the recent turmoil in the cryptocurrency market, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Terra ecosystem and the problems at crypto lenders such as Celsius, has contributed to an almost five-fold increase in the global demand for Ledger wallets.