Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao acknowledged the “readiness to follow the sanctions policy on Russian officials involved in military aggression.” “During the call with Changpeng Zhao agreed on verifying their Ukrainian users,” Fedorov got to add. Fedorov had previously requested that major cryptocurrency exchanges restrict Russian users’ addresses in February.
During the call with @cz_binance agreed on verifying their 🇺🇦 users via @diiagovua. CZ confirmed the readіness to follow the sanctions policy on the 🇷🇺 officials involved in military aggression against Ukraine, as well as to promptly respond to cases of sanctions regime violation
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) April 8, 2022
Six weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, the world’s first crypto-age war is shaping up to be a test for digital currencies as a force for both good and bad: arming Ukrainian volunteer fighters and feeding starving civilians; and possibly providing Russians with a way to circumvent Western sanctions and raise revenue.
Western officials, on the other hand, fear that Russians are siphoning their money into cryptocurrency, avoiding institutions and diluting sanctions against President Vladimir Putin.
A US Treasury assessment issued months before the war warned that cryptocurrency might “damage the efficacy of our sanctions” in a number of countries. According to Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm, Russia might use crypto assets to “circumvent sanctions through state-sponsored cybercrime, wealth concealment, and even crypto mining.”
According to European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, who stated last month that “crypto-assets are certainly being exploited as a way of bypassing the sanctions,” this is already happening.
Zhao claims that Binance, which conducted $34.1 trillion in trade last year, has used know-your-customer technology to prevent numerous dubious clients from registering on the site.
Binance has always complied with financial sanctions previouslu and com Interaction with sanctioned individuals has already been banned. They’ve even gone so far as to block anyone they’ve identified as being linked to sanctioned individuals. They have a world-class global compliance task force that includes renowned sanctions experts and is committed to meeting the highest regulatory compliance standards.
Binance has pledged $10 million to the UNHCR, UNICEF, People in Need, iSans, Palianystia, Rotary Club Kyiv International, and Truhoma’s humanitarian operations in Ukraine, with roughly $8 million already given. They’ve also developed the Ukraine Immediate Relief Fund, a crowdfunding tool that allows users to donate cryptocurrency to help provide emergency relief to refugees. More than $11 million has been raised, with Binance contributing an extra $6 million.
Ukraine and Russia had the world’s highest percentages of crypto users even before the war.
The increasing rates of currency transactions during the war, according to Chobanian, indicate that Russians may be circumventing sanctions.