Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine urged cryptocurrency exchanges to freeze accounts of Russians – Bits Media

Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine urged cryptocurrency exchanges to freeze accounts of Russians, in which he called on cryptocurrency platforms to block user accounts from Russia.

Fedorov emphasized, that it is necessary to block not only the accounts of Russian and Belarusian politicians, but also accounts of ordinary users. Later, the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister published a message, in which he thanked the DMarket trading platform for freezing the accounts of Russian users. He declared, that funds from their accounts will be used to support the Ukrainian military. The platform itself only reported the suspension of access to assets:

"All skins, tokens and assets will remain on user accounts, but access to their use is limited. Support for the Russian ruble has been removed from the platform".

Most cryptocurrency industry participants reacted negatively to Fedorov’s call, and to the actions of DMarket. Director of Strategic Development, Human Rights Foundation (HRF) Alex Gladstein (Alex Gladstein) stressed, that the exchanges, trying to block users from Russia, just as wrong, like the exchanges, blocking accounts of residents of Cuba or Palestine.

"This is immoral, because their totalitarian regimes were not chosen democratically. Fortunately, since Bitcoin can be used without ID, it won't work to its full potential", – Gladstein wrote.

Recall, that earlier the Canadian police sent a demand to cryptocurrency exchanges to “stop facilitating any transactions” of participants in the protest movement of truck drivers. Later, however, the requirement was canceled.