FTX CEO Gets Frustrated With Allegations Of Russian Sanction Evasion

The FTX CEO gets frustrated with allegations of Russians evading sanctions by using crypto and he is also quite frustrated with the overall perception of the crypto industry amid the war between Russia and Ukraine so let’s read more today in our latest cryptocurrency news.

With the start of the war between Ukraine and Russia, cryptocurrencies took a few roles and were used to send donations to Ukraine but it also aided in Russian oligarchs allegedly using them to bypass sanctions. The community insiders continue to refute the allegations and Sam Bankman Fried, the FTX CEO gets frustrated with these allegations more and more every day.

It has been a month since Russia launched the special military operation against the Eastern neighbor that turned out to be a clear war. The leaders of the former Soviet states met plenty of times trying to resolve the conflict but the actual results have yet to be seen. Refusing to get involved in the situation, plenty of countries in the world keep on imposing new sanctions on Russia’s financial infrastructure with other people close to Putin doing the same. Amid this, the word crypto became popular with some watchdogs speculated that Russia’s elite can bypass sanctions with crypto.

Some crypto insiders were not happy about this. The CEO of Coinbase and the CEO of Ripple also outlied their reasons why they believe oligarchs can’t use crypto in such a manner and now FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried joined the pack:

“I’m very frustrated with the messaging that our industry has had on this. I think it has been basically anti-regulatory, is how it’s been perceived, and I think that’s how it sounds, and I think that has caused a pretty big perception issue.”

While FTX, Kraken, and Coinbase said blocking Russian entities will be against the nature of crypto, some changed their stance right after. This came after the US and some other watchdogs introduced bills to prohibit financial entities from operating with the Russian banks and customers with coinbase even blocking 25,000 accounts that belong to Sanctioned Russians. On the other hand, Reuters reported that FTX continues to allow non-sanctioned Russian users to trade but it is still in communications with US regulators about the operations:

“I don’t think this is really about the content of the decisions. It’s about the way that they’ve been presented.”