Binance CEO CZ Calls It ‘Unethical’ To Block All Russian Accounts

Key Insights:

• Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance exchange, said it would be ‘unethical’ to block all Russian accounts.
• Binance follows sanction rules very closely, says CZ.
• The exchange has registered corporate headquarters, CEO declined to reveal the location.

Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the CEO of Binance crypto exchange, said that his exchange complied with sanctions on Russian users. It would be ‘unethical’ to block all Russian accounts.

In an interview with Bloomberg, CZ made these comments as to why not Binance ban all clients from Russia. He said:

“It’s not our decision to make to freeze user accounts. Also, from an ethical point of view, many Russians don’t support the war, so we should separate the politicians from the normal people.”

He cited examples of other major platforms such as Facebook and Google, saying that they didn’t block users from Russia and followed the rules by regulators.

On another note, CZ said that Binance is “strictly enforcing the sanction rules and anyone on the sanction list cannot use our exchange.”

This is achieved by full user verification checks to ensure that sanctioned crypto addresses cannot transact on the platform and are blocked completely.

He also stressed that Russians avoiding financial sanctions are not a “crypto-specific issue,” and banks and crypto companies follow the same rules.

When asked whether sanctioned Russian oligarchs could be trading on the Binance platform anonymously, Zhao said that Binance trusts identity verification. The exchange has increased its KYC requirements last August.

Other Exchanges Follow Sanctions

Previously, Binance rejected to honor the Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister’s request to freeze the accounts of “ordinary” Russians.

A Binance spokesperson told Reuters that the crypto exchange would not “unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users’ accounts.” The representative added,

“Crypto was meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe.”

Until now, Binance has blocked accounts of those Russian users upon which sanctions were imposed.

At the same time, Kraken exchange CEO Jesse Powell also commented on the matter, refusing to freeze user funds unless it was legally required to do so.

Coinbase also made similar statements Tuesday, stating that it “will not institute a blanket ban on all Coinbase transactions involving Russian addresses.”

New Registered Center

Zhao said that there had been necessary registrations made for establishing a Binance corporate headquarters.

In addition, Binance’s CEO also stated that he spends most of his time in Dubai. However, he declined to reveal the location of a new Binance headquarters before an official announcement.

FXEmpire reported last December that the world’s largest crypto exchange could place its headquarters in France after regulators globally put the exchange under intense scrutiny.

Binance was booted by Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and was under investigation by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Also, the exchange closed its trading platform in Singapore, halting all trade of its digital stock tokens.