Huobi and KuCoin Serve Customers of Sanctioned Russian Banks: Politco

According to a story published by Politico on February 24th, cryptocurrency exchanges Huobi and KuCoin continue to provide their services to customers of Russian banks that have been subject to sanctions.

In support of their claim, the news outlet referred readers to a study compiled by Inca Digital. Inca’s report makes the particular suggestion that customers of sanctioned Russian banks are able to utilize debit cards issued by their banks to conduct transactions on the peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading platform provided by either exchange.

It has been revealed that neither Huobi nor Kucoin accepts direct deposits from any of the sanctioned banks. In spite of the fact that there seems to be a legal “loophole,” the Chief Executive Officer of Inca Digital, Adam Zarazinski, maintains that the operations described above blatantly violate international sanctions.

The research also cites flaws in Binance’s regulations, despite the fact that the exchange is said to provide customers in Russia “several avenues” to acquire bitcoin via its exchange and peer-to-peer market. Despite the fact that Binance stopped accepting deposits of fiat currency coming from certain Russian payment cards in March 2022, this worry continues to persist.

These charges were refuted by Binance. It was reported that it strictly enforces KYC laws, and it was also stated that it censors communication between users in order to implement fines.

According to a study published by Inca Digital, ByBit enables users to purchase cryptocurrency via its peer-to-peer market as well as with the deposit of fiat currency. ByBit has chosen not to comment on the recent events.

A number of different exchanges have implemented measures to ban users from Russia. Throughout the month of October, Blockchain.com, Crypto.com, and LocalBitcoins all took action. Before March 2022, Coinbase restricted access to its platform for customers residing in Russia; Binance followed suit in April 2022.