Coinbase has suspended access to over 25,000 Russian wallets associated with unlawful activity

In light of Russia’s recent monetary restrictions, considerable attention has centred on the country’s population and their use of cryptocurrencies.

Coinbase said in a blog post on March 7 that it is committed to adhering to sanctions and is establishing a multi-layered, global sanctions policy as a consequence. The corporation said in particular that it has blacklisted over 25,000 Russian addresses it believes are associated with Russian persons or businesses engaged in illicit activity.

“Today, Coinbase has blocked over 25,000 addresses associated with Russian persons or businesses that we suspect are involved in criminal behaviour, the majority of which we discovered via our own proactive investigations. We provided these addresses with the authorities after identifying them in order to bolster sanctions enforcement.”

Additionally, the business stressed that the transactions are public, allowing for unprecedented insight into transaction data, traceable, and permanent, ensuring that once recorded on the blockchain, transactions remain immutable, preventing bad actors from withholding information in order to evade detection.

Are Russian oligarchs using cryptocurrency to evade sanctions?

To properly circumvent current sanctions, the Russian government and other sanctioned companies would need massive quantities of almost unobtainable digital assets.

Finbold recently outlined three reasons why Russia cannot circumvent sanctions using cryptocurrency, including a lack of liquidity, anonymity, and the fact that crypto exchanges are subject to anti-money laundering regulations.

Coinbase noted that the Russian central bank alone has about $630 billion in mainly immobile reserve assets.

“That is more than the combined market capitalization of all digital assets except one, and 5–10x the combined daily traded volume of all digital assets,” the businesses said.

As a result, concealing large-scale transactions using open and transparent cryptography would be substantially more challenging than utilising other strategies now available.

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