Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton turned the pressure up on cryptocurrency exchanges that have not banned Russian users from their platforms following the invasion of Ukraine.
'Isolate Russian Economic Activity'
“I was disappointed to see that some of the so-called crypto exchanges, not all of them, but some of them, are refusing to end transactions with Russia for some philosophy of libertarianism or whatever,” Clinton said during an interview on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC.
Clinton, a former New York senator who was the U.S. Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, said that “everybody should do as much as possible to isolate Russian economic activity right now.”
On Sunday, Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov asked major crypto-currency exchanges to block the addresses of ordinary Russian users, not just politicians.
"I'm asking all major crypto exchanges to block addresses of Russian users," Fedorov said on Twitter. "It's crucial to freeze not only the addresses linked to Russian and Belarusian politicians, but also to sabotage ordinary users."
SWIFT is a a global network used by banks to smooth the transfer of money across borders.
Major cryptocurrency exchanges have resisted freezing Russian addresses.
Kraken said in a statement that "freezing access to digital assets of citizens from an entire country does not necessarily punish those who are actually responsible and who may have already prepared for the possibility of blanket sanctions."
"We hope a solution can be found that doesn’t cause serious and unnecessary harm to the individuals, families, and businesses who ultimately played no part in the decision to invade Ukraine," Kraken said.
Coinbase said it will not institute a blanket ban on all transactions involving Russian addresses.
'Why Crypto Exists'
"Instead, we will continue to implement all sanctions that have been imposed, including blocking accounts and transactions that may involve sanctioned individuals or entities," the crypto exchange said in a statement.
Binance said it was not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users' accounts.
"Crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe," Binance said in a statement. "To unilaterally decide to ban people's access to their crypto would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists."
However, Binance added, "we are taking the steps necessary to ensure we take action against those that have had sanctions levied against them while minimizing impact to innocent users."
"Should the international community widen those sanctions further, we will apply those aggressively as well," Binance said.
On Thursday Binance said cardholders of sanctioned Russian banks would not be able to use them on their platform and confirmed that sanctioned individuals have had their access restricted, Reuters reported.
The Ukrainian government has posted pleas for cryptoasset donations on Twitter.
The U.S., the U.K., Canada, and the European Union recently announced that they would disconnect SWIFT from “selected” Russian banks.
The international community's sanctions on Russians with close ties to Vladimir Putin has some of the country's top oligarch's are scurrying to offload assets.
Several international squads have been created to track and confiscate sanctioned assets.
The U..S. team, Task Force KleptoCapture, has been assigned to find and stop “those whose criminal acts enable the Russian government to continue this unjust war," the U.S. Justice Department said.
