According to a blockchain forensic report, major crypto exchanges are unable to prevent traders from trading with sanctioned Russian banks. At least two established coin trading platforms continue to allow Russians to use their bank cards for peer-to-peer transactions, the analysis shows. It also highlights the growing Russian interest in Tether.
Russian traders are still using major cryptocurrency exchanges to bypass regulations.
Some of the world’s largest digital asset exchanges are failing in their measures to prevent sanctioned Russian banking institutions from operating through their platforms, areport by blockchain analytics firm Inca Digitalreveals, and Moscow’s published on the first anniversary of its invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
According to a survey cited by Bloomberg and Politico, traders used debit cards issued by Russian banks sanctioned by the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, among others, including state-run Sberbank, to trade on two Seychelles-based exchanges, Huobi and Kucoin’s peer-to-peer (PTP) platform.
Inca CEO Adam Zarazinsky said that neither of the two accept funds from blacklisted banks, but allowing crypto buyers to trade with each other using accounts at sanctioned institutions is “a bit of a loophole in the US and European sanctions The Exchange explains that this means “a direct violation of the The exchange has not yet commented on the findings.
Binance offers Russians a way to convert rubles into crypto, Inca claims
The survey examined data from 163 crypto trading platforms, centralized and decentralized exchanges, and P2P and OTC (over-the-counter) service providers. Nearly half of them allow Russian citizens to purchase digital currency and apply different customer verification (KYC) requirements, transaction limits, and geolocation tools. For example, Singapore-based Bybit allows users to convert rubles to crypto on a P2P platform and make fiat deposits, such as through “any card issued in Russia.”
Binance, the industry leader in terms of daily transaction volume, is also mentioned, and the report identifies potential vulnerabilities. The authors point out that the exchange offers “multiple ways for Russians to convert local currency into crypto” via its OTC and P2P markets, up to $10,000 without KYC checks.
Chagri Poyraz, global head of sanctions at Binance, said the exchange was “a full KYC platform and the first major exchange to implement EU crypto-related sanctions… Our P2P team takes the extra extra step of filtering all forms of communication between users to ensure that there is absolutely no potential nexus with Russian entities through any kind of workaround,” he stressed.
The study also points out that CIRs (Controller: Telecommunications Operator) using tethers.