As the Russian government is considering a ban on cash-to-cryptocurrency transactions, some major local crypto exchange platforms have encountered police raids.

Mosca, a crypto-to-cash exchange located in the Moscow International Business Center, was raided on April 23 in connection with fraud by one of its customers, Dmitry Titarenko, Mosca’s development head, confirmed to Cointelegraph.

“Law enforcement agencies have carried out a standard procedure of checking our customer data,” Titarenko told Cointelegraph at the local crypto event Blockchain Forum 2025.

Mosca’s office raid followed online reports linking several arrests of some Mosca customers with an alleged crypto robbery involving a victim reportedly giving fraudsters a massive cash deposit worth millions of dollars.

Cash-to-crypto ban to protect investors?

Mosca’s confirmed police raid came the next day after Evgeny Masharov, a member of the Russian Civic Chamber, proposed banning crypto exchangers from accepting cash from their customers to buy cryptocurrencies like Tether USDt (USDT).

A potential ban on cash-to-crypto transactions would be a “massive blow to fraudsters,” Masharov urged, adding that phone scammers are “often using crypto exchangers for withdrawing cash funds.”

Olga Serova, a former adviser to the head of the government of Samara region, claims to have lost up to $5 million to crypto fraudsters. Source: Baza

Subsequently, local news channel Baza reported on the Mosca’s raid, linking the event with a “record-breaking fraud” against Olga Serova, a former government adviser in Russia’s Samara region.

Serova, 71, reportedly fell victim to scammers in late 2024, cashing out her bank accounts to pass the fraudsters an estimated total of 421 million Russian rubles ($5.1 million). According to Baza, at least seven people were arrested, allegedly in connection with the case.

Mosca clients can buy up to 100,000 USDT with cash daily

Mosca, which allows investors to deposit up to 100,000 USDT ($100,000) daily, is not aware whether Serova’s incident was connected to its office raid on Wednesday, Titarenko said.

“Maybe it was another client,” he noted, adding that the raid was the first criminal case-related office raid at Mosca in the past three months.

Titarenko also mentioned that Mosca has been actively beefing up its Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer checks, including maintaining a blacklist of suspicious users.

Related: Russia’s central bank, finance ministry to launch crypto exchange

The raid caught Mosca during a major local event, Blockchain Life, returning to Moscow for the first time since October 2021. The company was one of the main guests at the conference, taking two center stands and winning a title of the “best crypto exchange service.”

One of Mosca’s stands at the Blockchain Forum 2025. Source: Cointelegraph

According to Sergey Mendeleev, a prominent figure in the Russian crypto community, the proposal to ban cash-to-crypto transactions is an alarming development for the community.

Speaking at the event, Mendeleev suggested that the Russian government might be turning away from crypto adoption if it opts to approve such a ban.

He also mentioned that raids are a common situation for crypto exchange services located at the Moscow International Business Center, also known as Moscow City.

Garantex, a crypto exchange that halted trading after Tether froze $27 million in USDT due to sanctions, was also among the exchangers located in Moscow City.

Magazine: Pokémon on Sui rumors, Polymarket bets on Filipino Pope: Asia Express

Key takeaways: 

SUI is up 23% in the past 24 hours and 73% weekly, outperforming top-cap cryptocurrencies.

The launch of the Grayscale SUI Trust and the xPortal/xMoney Mastercard partnership boosted investor confidence.

SUI’s TVL is up 40%, and daily DEX volumes surge by 177%, signaling strong ecosystem trust and utility.

Sui (SUI) price was up 23% in one day, to trade at $3.67 on April 25. This is part of a prevailing rebound that began on April 21 and has seen Sui rise more than 73% over the last seven days.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows SUI rose from a low of $2.11 on April 21, climbing as much as 77% to an intraday high of $3.71 on April 25.

SUI/USD daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

SUI’s performance over the last seven days made it the biggest gainer among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap.

Top gainers April 25. Source: CoinMarketCap

SUI price buoyed by positive fundamentals

SUI’s gains are primarily fueled by increasing investor confidence following the Grayscale SUI Trust launch and SUI’s strategic partnership with xPortal and xMoney to issue a virtual Mastercard across Europe.

“SUI’s officially out of stealth mode,” said pseudonymous analyst Kyledoops in an April 24 post on X.

“Grayscale just launched a trust, social chatter is exploding, and it’s [SUI] now sitting above AVAX and LINK in market cap,” Kyledoops expressed, adding:

“This isn’t just retail hype—Wall Street is stepping into the SUI zone. Momentum feels different this time. It’s real. And it’s accelerating.”

On April 23, Grayscale launched the Grayscale SUI Trust, which enables investors to gain exposure to SUI. The trust is now open to all eligible accredited investors.

Source: Grayscale

Adding to the tailwinds is SUI’s latest partnership with xPortal and xMone, which introduced a virtual Mastercard, enabling 2.5 million European users to spend the token at over 20,000 merchants via Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Source: Sui Network

Sui’s growing DeFi ecosystem

Sui remains among the top 10 layer-1 blockchains, with over $1.65 billion in total value locked (TVL) on the network. The chart below shows that the SUI’s TVL has increased about 40% over the last seven days.

Sui network: TVL and daily DEX volumes. Source: DefiLlama

Compared to other top-layer networks, SUI is well ahead of its rivals in terms of TVL gains on the daily, weekly and monthly time frames, as shown in the chart below.

Comparison of TVL performance on top layer-1 blockchains. Source: DefiLlama

SUI’s daily DEX volumes have risen by more than 177% over the last week, to $599 million. This is significantly higher than the 68% and 67% increases on BNB Chain and Solana, respectively.

Related: Price predictions 4/23: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, LINK, AVAX, SUI

Although Ethereum remains the undisputed leader at $10.6 billion, this has declined by more than 14% over the last seven days.

Are new all-time highs coming for SUI?

From a technical perspective, SUI price gained momentum after breaking out of a falling wedge pattern, as shown on the daily chart below.

After breaching a multimonth resistance trendline near $2.20, SUI reached the wedge’s technical target at $3.30. 

Bulls are now focused on all-time highs of $5.35, reached on Jan. 6.

SUI/USD daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

The relative strength index (RSI) has increased from 45 to 78 since April 20, reinforcing the strength of the bullish momentum.

However, to sustain the ongoing recovery, SUI price has to first overcome the resistance between $4.50 and $5.10, before going into price discovery.

Based on Elliott Wave analysis of the weekly chart, pseudonymous analyst Bitcoinsensus set a “massive” price target of $11.50 for SUI.

Source: Bitcoinsensus

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Central banks, particularly China, may start to shift away from US Treasurys, exploring alternatives such as gold and Bitcoin, according to Jay Jacobs, BlackRock’s head of thematics and active ETFs.

In a recent interview with CNBC, Jacobs said that geopolitical tensions and rising global uncertainty are accelerating diversification strategies among central banks.

He pointed to a long-term trend where countries have been reducing their reliance on dollar-based reserves in favor of assets like gold and, increasingly, Bitcoin (BTC).

“This whole diversification away from traditional assets and into things like gold and also crypto […] probably began three, four years ago,” Jacobs explained.

He said that recent geopolitical fragmentation has intensified the push toward alternative stores of value.

Jacobs referenced growing concerns about the freezing of $300 billion in Russian central bank assets following its invasion of Ukraine, suggesting that such events have prompted countries like China to rethink their reserve strategies.

BlackRock executive Jay Jacobs on CNBC. Source: YouTube

Related: Crypto, stocks enter ‘new phase of trade war’ as US-China tensions rise

Geopolitical fragmentation to shape global markets

During the interview, Jacobs said BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has identified geopolitical fragmentation as a defining force for global markets over the coming decades:

“We really identified geopolitical fragmentation as a mega force that is driving the world forward over the next several decades.”

He noted that this environment is fueling demand for uncorrelated assets, with Bitcoin increasingly viewed alongside gold as a safe-haven asset.

“We’ve seen significant inflows into gold ETFs. We’ve seen significant inflows into Bitcoin. And this is all because people are looking for those assets that will behave differently,” Jacobs said.

Related: Bitcoin ‘decouples,’ stocks lose $3.5T amid Trump tariff war and Fed warning of ‘higher inflation’

Investors highlight Bitcoin decoupling

Notably, Jacobs is not alone in stressing Bitcoin’s declining correlation with US equities. Several analysts have also observed that Bitcoin is beginning to decouple from the US stock market.

On April 22, Alex Svanevik, co-founder and CEO of the Nansen crypto intelligence platform, said Bitcoin’s price is showcasing its growing maturity as a global asset, becoming “less Nasdaq — more gold.”

He added that Bitcoin was “surprisingly resilient” amid the trade war compared to altcoins and indexes like the S&P 500, but remains vulnerable to economic recession concerns.

Source: Alex Svanevik

Echoing this sentiment, QCP Capital said in an April 21 Telegram note that Bitcoin seemed to be sharing some of gold’s limelight as a hedge against macroeconomic uncertainty.

“With equities finishing last week in the red and extending an April drawdown, the narrative of BTC as a safe haven or inflation hedge is once again gaining traction. Should this dynamic hold, it could provide a fresh tailwind for institutional BTC allocation,” it wrote.

Magazine: Ethereum is destroying the competition in the $16.1T TradFi tokenization race