Major cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase, Kraken and Binance will not ban Russians from using crypto platforms.
Unlike mainstream financial companies, some of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges have decided to stay put in Russia.
Coinbase and Binance reiterated today that they had no plans to preemptively ban Russians from using their platforms.
‘We believe everyone deserves access to basic financial services unless the law says otherwise,’ said Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase in a series of tweets on Friday.
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‘We are not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users’ accounts,’ a spokesperson of Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
Both cryptocurrency exchanges have said they will comply with government sanctions.
The statements come days after Coinbase and Binance said they would not freeze all Russian accounts following Ukraine’s request to major crypto exchanges asking for a complete ban.
Western countries including the United States and Britain have imposed sweeping financial sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine, with major Russian banks shut out of the SWIFT international payments system.
Last week, the CEO of Kraken, another US based cryptocurrency exchange, explained why the company would not be freezing accounts of its Russian clients in a series of tweets.
‘I understand the rationale for this request but, despite my deep respect for the Ukrainian people, @krakenfx cannot freeze the accounts of our Russian clients without a legal requirement to do so,’ said Jesse Powell, CEO of Kraken.
However, Powell warned Russians that such a requirement could be imminent if orders to do so came from the Russian government or foreign states like the US.
‘It could come from foreign states, like the US, as a weapon to turn the Russian populace against its government’s policies,’
Powell reiterated that the vast majority of crypto holders on Kraken were are anti-war and that Bitcoin was ‘the embodiment of libertarian values, which strongly favuor individualism and human rights’.
‘In Canada, crypto was the only financial rail left for those who opposed the regime,’ he said.
Powell also highlighted that if Kraken was to voluntarily freeze financial accounts of residents of countries unjustly attacking and provoking violence around the world, ‘step 1 would be to freeze all US accounts’.
‘As a practical matter, that’s not really a viable business option for us,’ he said.
Experts say the continued operation of crypto exchanges in Russia weakens Western attempts to isolate Moscow following the invasion of Ukraine by allowing entities to bypass the traditional financial system and thereby evading existing sanctions.
Biden administration officials have said that they do not believe Russia would be able to use cryptocurrency to completely evade sanctions.
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