'Russian Ethereum', Waves, Almost Triples Since Ukraine War Began

cryptonews.com:

The WAVES token, issued by the protocol with ties in Russia, is close to a 3x price gain in a matter of just two weeks after it rallied right after Russia invaded Ukraine.

The massive gains also follow crypto exchange Binanceintegrating the token into its Loans platform last week, and a new roadmap showing plans for a changed consensus mechanism and compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

On Tuesday at 9:49 UTC, WAVES, currently ranked 52nd by market capitalization according to CoinGecko, was up by 28% for the past 24 hours and 172% for the past two weeks, trading at USD 23.5.

WAVES price last 30 days:

Notably, the price rise followed the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24. The project founder has connections to both countries. Some online users even called it “the Russian Ethereum.”

The Waves project was founded in Russia by Ukrainian-born physicist Alexander Ivanov. Crunchbase states that he founded it back in 2016, with its base in Moscow, while it was registered in Switzerland in 2017.

In his post on February 27, Ivanov called for peace.

Back in 2019, Ivanov sold his stake in the Vostok platform founded by the Waves team to an early investor, Mark Garber of the Moscow-based financial consultancy GHP Group. Ivanov said that he wanted to focus on the Waves project and its international development.

Vostok itself has had a number of partnerships with large Russian companies and organizations, including those state-owned, such as Dom.RF, a financial institution for housing development created by a decree of the Government of the Russian Federation, as well as the long-sanctioned, state-owned manufacturing conglomerate Rostec, according to Gazeta.ru.

While Waves distanced itself from Vostok –