In the field of blockchain and digital currency, Russia gave birth to global leaders such as Pavel Valeyevich Durov and Buterin, but in the end, like the Internet before, local development was not sluggish. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Russian economy experienced a short-term brilliance, but the economy declined rapidly due to the global financial turmoil, oil price volatility and Western sanctions. At present, Russia's economic growth rate is only 1.8%, far below the world average growth rate of 3.8%. This led to a sharp depreciation of the ruble. From the second half of 2017 to 2018, within a year, the rupee fell from 0.0175 to 0.0142, a depreciation of nearly 20%.
At the same time, prices have skyrocketed, and it has become the norm for daily necessities to double in price overnight. As a result, the investment and risk aversion of the Russian public has led to the fanatical pursuit of blockchain and digital telemarketing list currency. It is estimated that one in every 70 Russians is a cryptocurrency investor. It turned out that the founder of Vkontakte, Pavel Valeyevich Durov, was forced to resign and leave Russia. After that, he founded Telegram (similar to WeChat) in Germany, launched an ICO, and sold the token TON (Telegram Open Network). According to the Wall Street Journal, Telegram raised $1.6 billion, making it the largest ICO in the world that year.
At the same time, because Telegram is open source, encrypted, anonymous, 100,000 online supergroups, and permanent storage of chat records, it has become the preferred communication tool for the blockchain and digital currency communities. According to media reports, more than 80% of the ICO community is active on Telegram. At the end of 2013, the Ethereum fund-raising ICO founded by Buterin Vitalik raised $18 million, which was the second largest ICO at the time. In 2018, the market value of Ethereum was 800 billion yuan ($122.3 billion), ranking second in the world, second only to Bitcoin. Russia has a love-hate relationship with blockchain and digital currency technology. On the one hand, it hopes to use new technologies to improve the current