The Swiss Federal Council has said it will order the freezing of all Russian crypto assets held within the country’s borders. writes financial times. The restrictions will affect the digital property of sanctioned citizens and enterprises of Russia.
The government stressed that it supports the EU’s position regarding the actions of the Kremlin and is trying to comply with all sanctions imposed against Moscow. The Federal Council added that Switzerland will not only join the restrictions imposed by Europe, but will also take separate measures against cryptocurrencies whose owners are associated with Russia.
Earlier, the country had already frozen the funds of Russian individuals and legal entities included in the EU sanctions list, and banned entry for five oligarchs allegedly close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “To date, all four EU sanctions packages have been adopted and implemented in Switzerland,” Swiss Economy Minister Guy Parmelin said.
223Russian
lost access to their bank accounts and assets in Swiss organizations
According to him, since February 28, 223 Russians, including “oligarchs and close confidants of Putin”, have been found and frozen bank accounts and assets. However, Parmelin added that these measures are not enough and more steps need to be taken with regard to crypto assets in order to “protect the integrity” of the national crypto industry.
Find and neutralize
Federal Foreign Affairs Adviser to Swiss President Ignazio Cassis said in February that as part of the sanctions pressure on Russia, the Swiss authorities intend to adjust some regulatory norms so that the country’s financial infrastructure cannot be used by Russia to circumvent sanctions.
At the same time, cryptocurrency and the blockchain network are often criticized by representatives of the world of traditional finance due to the anonymity of its users and the risks associated with money laundering and other types of criminal activity. In particular, in Europe they fear that Russia will use the blockchain to carry out prohibited transactions.
However, one of the main innovations of cryptocurrencies is a decentralized network that is not under the jurisdiction of any country and makes it impossible to freeze or seize anyone’s assets. Nevertheless, the Swiss authorities will still be able to get to a certain class of Russian crypto assets, Nikita Zuborev, a senior analyst at the Russian crypto exchange aggregator Bestchange.ru, told Lente.ru.
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“It is possible to freeze cryptocurrency assets only in custodial services, where the user transfers his tokens to trust management and loses direct access to them, for example, on exchanges, in online wallets, funds, marketplaces. It is physically impossible to freeze assets on ordinary crypto wallets – this is one of their main advantages, ”the expert emphasized. He concluded that there are potential risks only for those who decide to use financial services that Switzerland can “reach out to”.
Zuborev’s words are also confirmed by the statement of the Swiss Minister of Economics: “If they (sub-scanned individuals and legal entities from Russia – approx. “Tapes.ru”) use crypto services — funds, exchanges, and so on — we can target these service points.” However, according to a Bestchange.ru specialist, the Russian crypto industry will suffer little from the termination of cooperation with Swiss companies.
In Switzerland itself, there are no popular services, without which a full-fledged activity is impossible. Even if you cover their entire sphere of influence, it is difficult to find critical market segments. But now Russian investors will have to carefully choose the companies through which they work, so as not to suddenly find themselves under a freeze.
According to the FT, the EU has also announced similar measures against Russian crypto assets. According to French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, the bloc is considering measures to “further increase the effectiveness” of anti-Russian sanctions and prevent any ways to circumvent the introduced restrictive measures, including with the help of cryptocurrencies. Western politicians fear that it is cryptocurrencies that can become a way to transfer money around the world, despite any restrictions.
The fears of European countries are not in vain, the publication points out – after the start of the special operation in the Donbass, Ukrainians and Russians began to actively buy bitcoin and the USDT stablecoin, pegged to the dollar in a ratio of 1:1. Analysts at Arcane Research published on March 1 report, according to which, on the first day of the conflict, the daily trading volume of the Bitcoin-ruble pair rose to $1.5 billion for the first time since May, while the USDT and ruble trading volume rose on February 28 to a record $34.94 million. The price of USDT on the Ukrainian site Kuna rose to 36.97 hryvnia ($1.23) on February 24, as Ukrainians began to massively transfer money into a stable cryptocurrency.
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