Binance Blocks Crypto Trading for Russian Nationals per EU Sanction

Key Insights:

• Binance will be limiting services for Russian accounts to just withdrawals.
• EU recently implemented the fifth package of sanctions on the country.
• IMF predicted an 8.5% contraction in Russia’s GDP for the year 2022-23.

In an announcement, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Binance, has declared that it will no longer provide certain services to Russian account holders on the platform.

The only option that will be open to Russian nationals will be to withdraw money out of their account.

Binance Stands Against Russia

Ever since the country began invading Ukraine, it has been facing backlash and hardcore sanctions from countries around the world. The European Union, in particular, has been mercilessly harsh towards Russia.

The EU recently imposed the fifth package of sanctions on the country, and one stand-out sanction in this was an extended prohibition on deposits to crypto wallets.

Thus following the sanctions, Binance officially announced the same limitations for Russians on the exchange today. However, the exchange has not outright placed a ban on all Russian accounts.

Only the ones who have crypto assets exceeding the value of 10,000 Euros will be subjected to these restrictions.

Accordingly, these users will be barred from making new deposits and trading on all fronts – spot, Futures, custody wallets, and staked and earned deposits.

They will only be allowed to withdraw their money and close all Futures/Derivatives positions within the next 90 days.

In line with the announcement, Binance said,

“While these measures are potentially restrictive to normal Russian citizens, Binance must continue to lead the industry in implementing these sanctions. We believe all other major exchanges must follow the same rules soon.”

The exchange finally caved after rejecting pleads from Ukraine to do the same and finding a loophole to only block sanctioned accounts when the White House requested the same earlier last month, as reported by FXEmpire.

Binance also seems to be trying to stay in line with popular public opinion after facing scrutiny for its recent debacle. Yesterday, Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao, were bashed for launching their new emojis for Binance-related hashtags on Twitter as they were in the form of Swastika.

To make things worse, the emojis were launched on the day coinciding with Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20. In response, Binance quickly took down the emoji before releasing a statement and a new design for the emoji.

Well that was obviously really embarrassing.

We’re not sure how that emoji got through several layers of review without anyone noticing, but we immediately flagged the issue, pulled it down, and the new emoji design is being rolled out as we speak.

— Binance (@binance) April 20, 2022

No Escape for Russia?

Since the exchange has placed no restrictions on accounts holding less than 10k Euros, it won’t be surprising if these blocked accounts end up opening new ones with balances less than the threshold.

But while crypto is one aspect, the country is still susceptible to economic damages from the other sanctions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently released the projected GDP of countries for the year 2022-23.

While the GDP of countries like India and Saudi Arabia are forecasted to grow by 8.2% and 7.6%, respectively, the IMF predicted a contraction of 8.5% for Russia this financial year.

The only other country expected to suffer a worse fate is Ukraine, with its GDP predicted to contract by 35% due to the attack by Russia.