Binance Stops Personal Cryptocurrency, Dollar, Ruble Transfers for Russians
The largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance will stop supporting P2P cryptocurrency exchange for Russians from 31 January 2024. At the same time, Russians will still be able to circumvent the restrictions, Binance reports on its website.
In particular, Russian users will no longer be able to make interpersonal exchanges for currency pairs: USDT/RUB, BTC/RUB, FDUSD/RUB, BNB/RUB, ETH/RUB, BUSD/RUB, and RUB/RUB P2P.
As noted, the last support for ruble trading will take place at the end of January 2024, but Russians can still trade cryptocurrencies on the CommEX exchange, to which Binance sells its entire Russian business. Binance has developed a process for transferring Russian assets to the new exchange.
In September, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced that it was completely withdrawing from Russia. The exchange signed an agreement to sell all of its Russian business to CommEX.
"As we look to the future, we recognise that operating in Russia is incompatible with Binance's compliance strategy," said Noah Perlman, the exchange's chief compliance officer.
It was noted that over the next few months, Binance will close its exchange services and other business lines in Russia.
On November 15, Binance stopped supporting deposits in Russian rubles.
In May, it became known that the US Department of Justice was investigating Binance. The US authorities suspected that Russian citizens were using the platform to circumvent sanctions.
In turn, Binance stressed that it "adheres to the rules of global sanctions" by denying access to the platform to "people, organisations, legal entities and countries that have been blacklisted by the international community".
In March 2023, the crypto exchange blocked the ability of Russians to conduct transactions with dollars and euros through its P2P service. This decision was dictated by the adoption of the tenth package of European sanctions against Russia.
As The Gaze previously reported, in November, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) expelled Russia from one of the organisation's key bodies, the UNESCO Executive Board.
"For the first time in history, Russia has been expelled from the UNESCO Executive Board. The era of Russian influence is over, and rightly so: Russian terrorists have no place at the head of important international organisations. Russia's international role will only weaken," President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy commented on the decision.