The Russian government has been touted to use cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions imposed by Western countries.
The European Central Bank (ECB) has voiced its concern that cryptos can be used to evade Russian sanctions. Several governments across the globe have imposed sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in February.
However, several reports have emerged that the Russian government can use cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao debunked this claim in a recent interview with CNN. CZ told NN's Richard Quest that cryptocurrencies could not be used to evade sanctions due to the transparency of blockchain technology.
He added that cryptocurrency exchanges and trading platforms now strictly comply with government sanctions. He stated that;
"On using cryptos to avoid sanctions, I think that is a mess. If you look at the data, nobody smart does that. Crypto is too traceable. Governments around the world are very good at tracing crypto transactions. So crypto is not good for that."
Some of the leading crypto exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase and Kraken, have all refused to freeze Russians from their platforms following calls from the Ukrainian government.
According to the exchanges, innocent Russians would be negatively impacted if all Russians were frozen from accessing crypto-related services. CZ added that;
"We do not have the ability to freeze normal Russian users’ assets because that is illegal for us to do. That's for governments to decide. We are totally against the war. We are against politicians and dictators who start the war. But we are not against the people. There are many people on both sides of Ukraine and Russia that are suffering, and we want to help those people."
Binance was launched in 2017 and quickly rose to become the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange. It remains the leading digital currency exchange in terms of the daily trading volume.
