Coinbase obstructed many addresses linked to alleged illicit activities from Russia. The company uses a blockchain analytics protocol to study emerging threats.
The pressure caused by the financial punishments imposed by the United States of America and the European Union (EU) against Russia after its military incursion on Ukraine approached the bitcoin and other digital currency exchanges.
One of the exchanges that gave up to pressure and are working hard on hardening sanctions is Coinbase. The US-based exchange highlighted that the procedures might significantly encourage national security and deter aggression.
The company’s position appeared in an announcement made on March 7. There, the entity explained that sanctions are delicate procedures, and administrations get better positioned to choose when and how to execute them to achieve their goals.
The entity has also decided to obstruct more than 25,000 addresses directly to Russian individuals or entities that might be part of illicit behaviors.
The company said that once they identify these addresses, they would share them with the current administrations to enforce further the sanctions applied to those individuals.
Sanctions Program Developed by Coinbase
According to Coinbase, the entity has already developed a multi-tiered global sanctions program. The first mission is to anticipate possible threats through a blockchain analytics program by identifying high-risk behavior, studying emerging threats, and generating new procedures to deal with those struggles; this method is their action against those blocked addresses.
Second, the entity also verifies account applications against lists of sanctioned individuals or entities; it does this action through an independent vendor before allowing a person to carry out a single operation such as a transaction.
Coinbase explained that if a customer has citizenship and lives in a financially punished nation or identifies themselves as an unauthorized individual or entity, they cannot use an account on their network.
The company also improved the global sanctions lists they execute to detect if a customer has opened a Coinbase account. The entity said they use this screening protocol to target that account and block it.
Coinbase joins the administration’s request of US President Joe Biden, who days ago invited these entities to help prevent Bitcoin and other digital currencies from being an alternative for financially punished Russian individuals and entities.
Various Opinions about Bitcoin and Russia
Former US Attorney General Michael Parker explained it would be naive to think that Russia has not considered how to defend its interests in this economic sanctions scenario.
Days before the military attack started, the Russian Ministry of Finance drafted a bill strictly regulating digital assets.
On the other hand, some enthusiasts think that bitcoin is not the best alternative for Russia. Legal expert Andrew Jacobson does not see Russia as likely to adopt a good position about a decentralized currency like Bitcoin.
Jacobson also believes that a digital asset that finds a way to go through a separate path away from the state system, such as Bitcoin, would undermine Russia’s power over its monetary system and affect its economic control.
By: Jenson Nuñez
