Korean crypto exchanges have imposed restrictions on access from Russia

Major cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea have announced the suspension of servicing Russian users in order to comply with sanctions requirements. This is reported by the Yonhap news agency.

Upbit, the country's largest exchange, announced on Thursday that withdrawal requests from Russian IP addresses may be rejected.

"We block requests from users from countries that have been assigned a high risk of money laundering in accordance with the instructions of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF)," the company explained.

Gopax exchange on Wednesday froze about 20 accounts registered by Russian users and restricted access from Russian IP addresses. Bithumb and Korbit introduced similar measures on Thursday.

At the same time, other major global exchanges, such as Binance and Kraken, have publicly announced that they will not block Russian users unilaterally.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said that his company will impose a ban on access for Russians if it receives appropriate instructions from the American leadership.

"If the US authorities decide to impose restrictions, we will, of course, comply with the law—" he wrote. - Previously, we do not impose a ban on the use of Coinbase by Russians. We believe that everyone deserves access to basic financial services, as long as it is not prohibited by law. Some ordinary Russians have now started using cryptocurrencies amid a decline in the local currency."