As a result of the invasion of Ukraine, Switzerland and Singapore have joined the crypto sanctions against Russia, further isolating Russia from the crypto industry. In the meantime, Japan has said that it is mulling crypto sanctions as well.
Singapore announced, unexpectedly today, imposing penalties on the Russian Central Bank, cryptocurrency transactions, and military and technology exports. Singapore became the first Southeast Asian country to impose sanctions on Russia as a result of this unusual choice. Switzerland has declared that it will freeze crypto assets belonging to Russian users, following the footsteps of Singapore and South Korea. Japan also stated that it was closely investigating Russia’s use of crypto to circumvent sanctions and was putting in place measures to prevent this from happening.
Crypto exchange heavyweights like Binance and Coinbase have rejected Ukraine’s proposal to bar Russians from the crypto market unless it is necessary by law. Despite the fact that no legal decrees requiring exchange platforms to block Russian IPs exist, many didn’t require one. However, five local South Korean exchanges said yesterday that they are barring Russian IPs and freezing their accounts in response to the United States’ official move to tighten sanctions against Russia.
Only these five exchanges were authorised to conduct crypto-to-fiat trades. As a result of the unified prohibition, Russian users were unable to pay out their crypto holdings in South Korea.
Let us just wait and watch which other countries will announce crypto sanctions for Russia.
