Sharjah24 – AFP: Bitcoin on Friday rose above $45,000, boosted by talk that the Kremlin could accept the world's biggest cryptocurrency in exchange for Russian gas.
It climbed above the key trading level for only the third time this year and remains far below record levels.
European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde this week spoke of her concern that cryptocurrencies were already being used as a loophole to avoid sanctions against Russia.
Lagarde said she was "most concerned" about the high volume of rubles being converted into crypto assets.
Another bitcoin price boost could come from US energy giant ExxonMobil using surplus natural gas -- that is usually burned during extraction -- to supply electricity for mining of the cryptocurrency, according to Bloomberg.
Mining for bitcoin relies on massive computers that use huge amounts of energy.
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