In light of the Ukraine crisis, major crypto exchange firms including Binance and Kraken have responded to the pleas to freeze Russian users’ crypto addresses. Ukraine’s Plea to Crypto Exchange Firms On February 27, Mykhailo Federov – Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine took to Twitter to urge crypto exchanges to freeze the crypto addresses of Russians. The request came days after both U.S and EU decided to remove Russian banks out of SWIFT and freeze overseas assets of Russia’s Central Bank. I’m asking all major crypto exchanges to block addresses of Russian users. It’s crucial to freeze not only the addresses linked to Russian and Belarusian politicians, but also to sabotage ordinary users. — Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 27, 2022 Fedorov continued tweeting about firms freezing accounts of Russian and Belarusian users. One such startup, DMarket specializes in NFT and virtual in-game items in Metaverse was praised by Fedorov for the same. Received breaking news. @dmarket, a platform for trading NFT & In-game Metaverse items, decided to freeze the accounts of users from the Russian Federation and Belarus. Funds from these accounts could be donated to the war effort. Nowadays Robin Hoods. Bravo. — Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 27, 2022 Crypto Exchanges Response to Ukraine Jesse Powell, CEO of Kraken stated in response to Ukraine’s plea that although the sentiment is duly respected, they cannot block Russian users. Cryptocurrency exchange Binance also voiced similar opinions. Early morning on February 28, Jesse Powell tweeted about declining the request set by Ukraine. However, he stated, “Russians should be aware that such a requirement could be imminent.” 1/6 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. Russians should be aware that such a requirement could be imminent. #NYKNYC https://t.co/bMRrJzgF8N — Jesse Powell (@jespow) February 28, 2022 In the same thread, Jesse Powell also mentioned the objective of Kraken. According to Powell, Kraken FX wishes to bridge individual humans out of the legacy financial system and urge them to look forward to the crypto world. “Where arbitrary lines on maps no longer matter, where they don’t worry about being caught in broad, indiscriminate wealth confiscation.” Although Binance stated that there are no plans of blocking user accounts, they do wish to take action against users blacklisted by the West. Binance also wants to minimize the impact on innocent users. Furthermore, Binance guarantees to comply with sanctions imposed by the international community.
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