The Russia's central bank wanted cryptocurrencies to be banned in its country but the Russian president, Vladimir Putin said bitcoin mining and other crypto mining will be beneficial for Russia. Some people at that time have been supectimg this could be a move by the Russia's president that he is planning to invade Ukraine which will result to sanctions, thinking cryptocurrencies would be a means to evade sanctions and make it economically less effective.
Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov demand crypto exchanges to freeze all Russian accounts so that the sanction can be effective, but most exchanges did not support this. I read few days ago that cryptocurrencies may not help in Russia sanction but FinCEN concluded that Russia can attempt to use cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions.
FinCEN Provides Financial Institutions with Red Flags on Potential Russian Sanctions Evasion AttemptsWhat is your take? What role can cryptocurrencies play in helping Russia sanctions evasion and to what extent can this be?
While big crypto exchanges aren't going to block all Russian accounts because, the way Binance explained it, they're not sure if it's legal to do that (and they're probably right that it's not), they are restricting those accounts that can be linked to government or belonging to people who are under sanctions. But I agree that avoiding these restrictions on a small-scale is possible (if the amounts of money are not big enough to raise concerns and there's a bunch of people involved). Putting large funds into or pulling them out of Bitcoin can prove much harder. Also, there isn't much to sell for Bitcoin when reserved funds are frozen and many assets are frozen as well, not to mention that it seems to me Putin doesn't want to abandon ruble and is thus unlikely to approve transferring what's left of Russia's budget into something like Bitcoin. So it's all good.