Sanctions may have thrown Russian businesses for a loop, but leaders of the country are reportedly using cryptocurrency to bypass the recent sanctions against the country.
Blockchain analysis firm Elliptic has tracked down a crypto wallet, which has ‘significant asset holdings’. In an interview with Bloomberg, the co-founder – Tom Robinson – revealed that the wallet likely contains millions of dollars that belong to sanctioned Russians officials and oligarchs.
The exact value or the nature of the crypto assets has not been revealed by the company, but they claim to have shared the information with the relevant authorities.
Not everyone is complying with Russia’s sanctions
Mainstream crypto players, like Coinbase and Binance, have complied with the regulator’s requests and cracked down on transactions originating out of Russia. However, there are still more than 400 crypto services in the world that let anonymous users trade digital assets using Russia’s native currency, the ruble.
According to Elliptic, a week before the conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out, ruble-related activity on some of these services – like Tornado Cash – was seen surging. Tornado Cash has declined to restrict services or comply with the sanctions and continues to anonymise transactions in Ethereum.