To add to the wild geopolitical and global economic situation brewing, the U.S. Treasury just included crypto exchanges in its sanctions guidance, instructing exchanges to freeze Russian assets in crypto. Crypto climbed today…? 🤔
The Treasury’s regulations will prohibit anyone in the U.S. from supporting Russian individuals or its institutions with crypto in an effort to prevent Russia from escaping U.S. sanctions with cryptocurrencies. Specifically, the U.S. has asked for cooperation from Binance, FTX, Kraken, and Coinbase in its latest sanctions. Ukraine also asked several crypto exchanges to freeze individual crypto accounts, but both Kraken and Binance refused to cooperate.
Binance commented on its refusal to cooperate with freezing individual Russian crypto accounts:
“We are not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users’ accounts. Crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe. To unilaterally decide to ban people’s access to their crypto would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists. However, 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.”
Ironically, the global cryptocurrency market cap rose 11.86% in the last 24 hours, which offers some indication that crypto traders are feeling bullish (or maybe Russian oligarchs are rushing to convert their wealth into USDC?) Bitcoin is up +11.1% and Ethereum gained +8.6%.
What’s causing the crypto boost? 💡 Despite efforts to sanction/regulate crypto transactions, some sources claim crypto’s rally today may be a direct effect of geopolitical tensions and sanctions — use of “uncensored money” may be up during the increase in financial regulation.