Ukrainian Vice PM Asks Crypto Exchanges Not To Service Russian Users

The Ukrainian Vice PM asks crypto exchanges worldwide not to service Russian users after Russia inflicted a war upon Ukraine so let’s read more today in our latest cryptocurrency news.

The role of crypto grows in global political conflicts and that’s why one of Ukraine’s leaders hopes to stop crypto from benefiting their enemy. The Ukrainian Vice PM Mykhailo Fedorov called on crypto exchanges to freeze all Russian users’ blockchain addresses in order to help Ukraine defend itself from the invasion. Fedorov outlined the importance of cutting off crypto access to the Russian and Belarusian politicians and also sabotaging the ordinary users. The request follows after a slew of sanctions against Russia were launched from western allies including freezing the assets of Russia’s four biggest banks and reducing the reliance on oil exports.

Stand with the people of Ukraine
Now accepting cryptocurrency donations. Ethereum. Bitcoin and Tether (USDTtrc20)

BTC — 357a3So9CbsNfBBgFYACGvxxS6tMaDoa1P

ETH — 0x165CD37b4C644C2921454429E7F9358d18A45e14

USDT (trc20) — TEFccmfQ38cZS1DTZVhsxKVDckA8Y6VfCy

— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 26, 2022

Crypto is going center stage in the conflict and provides a vehicle for financial support to Ukraine and maybe even Russia. Putin discussed using crypto as a means of payment to transfer funds from one place to another. Bitcoin was also used to bypass Canada’s financial restrictions and banned donations to the freedom convoy protest. While the BTC transactions made it successfully to the truckers, more funds connected to exchanges were red-flagged and were frozen by a court order. Some see the Ukrainian Vice PM’s request was anti-ethical to the crypto promise of universal access while others back the move hoping to help the Ukrainian people.

The Vice PM supported a recent move from the DMarket platform to freeze the accounts of the Russian and Belarusian users while also calling on other figures like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk to quit colonizing Mars and support Ukraine instead.

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

As earlier reported, Crypto emerged as the method of choice for fundraising and donations while offering a number of advantages over banks and traditional methods of money transfer which are quite expensive, slow, and often restricted and monitored. The crypto community answered the call and gathered up to $19 million in digital asset donations which were made since the Russian invasion started. Reuters reported that a total of $8 million was gathered until February 27 but the Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic updated the figures and now the total recieved by the Ukrainian government is $18.9 million, most of which came over the past two days after Fedorov’s appeal.