Key takeaways:
- Binance has announced that Russian accounts with more than 10,000 EUR in total value will be disallowed from trading and making deposits
- Accounts whose balances don’t exceed 10,000 EUR will remain fully functional
- Binance’s restrictions against Russian users come as a response to the EU’s new package of economic sanctions
Binance puts additional restrictions on Russian citizens following the new round of EU sanctions
On Thursday, Binance announced that accounts belonging to Russian nationals living in the country or overseas will be subject to new restrictions. According to the company’s announcement, accounts that have digital assets in excess of 10,000 EUR ($10,880) will no longer be allowed to use deposit or trading functionality going forward. This means that affected accounts will only be able to request withdrawals.
In addition, Russian citizens that have open futures or other derivatives positions and have an accounts balance of more than 10,000 EUR will be given 90 days to close their positions.
Accounts that have a total value lower than 10,000 EUR will remain fully operational and will continue to have access to spot and derivatives trading and other Binance features.
Binance said in a statement that the new set of measures comes as a response to the EU’s fifth package of economic sanctions levied against Russia. The exchange added:
“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.”
In March, Binance removed access to Mastercard and Visa transactions for its Russian users due to the leading transaction processors’ withdrawal from the country in the aftermath of the attack on Ukraine. At the time, Binance founder CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said that he is against “unilaterally” freezing accounts of ordinary Russians and pointed out that letting Russian citizens use crypto could ultimately devalue the ruble.
Zhao was joined in his position by Kraken CEO Jesse Powell who publicly shared his opinion that putting a blanket ban on Russian crypto users could in fact be detrimental. “As far as sanctioning individuals, we haven’t seen that work very well,” wrote Powell on Twitter as a response to Kyiv’s request for a total cryptocurrency exchange ban levied against ordinary Russian users.
