Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, remains active on Twitter and from there leads a campaign to round up Russian users. He calls for everyone to be blocked from cryptocurrency exchanges, Visa, MasterCard payment systems, and even metaverses.
Binance responded to Federov’s request noting that “we are not going to unilaterally freeze the accounts of millions of innocent users. Cryptocurrencies are meant to provide greater financial freedom to people around the world.” said the exchange’s representative told Reuters.
However, Binance is blocking the accounts of any of its Russian clients that are subject to sanctions.
kraken too fixed position as its CEO Jesse Powell responded to Federov on Twitter that his request can only be carried out through legal mechanisms.
“I understand the reason for this request, but despite my deep respect for the Ukrainian people, Kraken cannot freeze the accounts of our Russian clients without a legal requirement to do so. The Russians must be aware that such a requirement could be imminent.”
Jesse Powell, CEO of the Kraken exchange.
Powell added a sobering message: “The hardest thing about having power is knowing when not to use it. Our mission is best accomplished if we focus on individual needs over those of any government or political faction. The People’s Money is an exit strategy for humans, a weapon for peace, not war.”
Fedorov had previously published a request for information about the cryptocurrency wallets of Russian politicians and Belarusians, saying the Ukrainians are ready to give “generous rewards” to anyone who provides clues.
He also noted that the time had come to “destroy common users.” With this, he called not only to freeze bitcoin and other cryptocurrency wallets associated with Russian and Belarusian politicians, but also to freeze the addresses of common users.
The Twitter community has reacted by rejecting his request. “Ordinary citizens of Russia are friends of the Ukrainians. Don’t you dare put civilians on a par with criminals,” one user commented. While another person said: “the point is that the transfer of value cannot be manipulated. There can be no exceptions.”
The also Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine is arming a “technological army” that already has more than 220,000 subscribers in Telegram, at least at the time of writing this note. And from there he coordinates the actions with which he seems to be making some progress.
The official applauded the decision of the startup Ukrainian DMarket to freeze the accounts of Russians and Belarusians. All assets will remain in the user accounts, but access to its use is now limitedas reported by its development team.
DMarket, a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace of esport metaverses, said it has also removed the Russian ruble from its platform.
Similarly an Ethereum mining pool terminated its service to customers with a Russian IP address.
“We are terminating service to all Russian IP addresses and paying outstanding balances,” says a statement from the Ethereum Flexpool mining pool, which currently consists of 52,174 miners generating 54.3 TH/ yes
As previously reported by CriptoNoticias, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the European Union agreed to expel the “selected” Russian banks from the Society for Telecommunications World Interbank Financials (SWIFT). This has made the eyes move towards Bitcoin, since many believe that this and other cryptocurrencies are ideal to circumvent sanctions.
However, some analysts and connoisseurs of the blockchain ecosystem, consulted by US media, see it as unlikely that Bitcoin will help Russia avoid international sanctions.