LocalBitcoins, a Finnish-based peer-to-peer (P2P) platform, has announced that it will no longer allow access to its services for Russian nationals.
This comes in line with new EU sanctions placed on the country, the 8th wave since the invasion began earlier this year.
The new sanctions will change previous restrictions of a maximum account size of 10,000 Euros to a straight blanket ban. This will likely be hardest on the Russian general public, who may not support the ongoing war.
Adhering to the sanctions will damage revenues for the LocalBitcoins company, which saw around 8% of the total volume on the P2P from Russia last month. The country used to be the largest market for the P2P provider, with 19% of the volume in 2020 being Russian-based.
Crypto.com and Blockchain.com have also notified all Russian users of their platforms to inform them that they have until the 27th of October for those affected to withdraw their assets, which will become no longer accessible. In addition, dapper Labs developers are also set up to block Russians from using their services.
This will be another blow to the ideals of decentralization that blockchain developers so strongly wish to happen, as limiting access to those who may disagree with the war goes against the true values of fair access for all.
This then begs the question, where will Russian money flow?
Several new decentralized projects sit on the horizon. One such ICO currently in progress is Uniglo.io.
Uniglo promises a token that is backed by a vault, in which a set of real-world assets will sit in tokenized form. These assets will include the likes of gold, watches, cars, real estate, and even promising utility tokens. All of these assets are used to prove the platform’s value and promote GLO as a store of value.
The real kicker is that Uniglo will implement a fast burn feature that will continuously remove the token from circulation and increase the value assigned to each token over time.
This ingenious system is currently approaching the end of its presale period, and Russians, who may be living abroad or want nothing to do with the atrocities being caused in Eastern Europe, may find themselves looking to place their trust in a platform that will not block them for actions they may not have any responsibility for. The team is usually present on Telegram for any questions.
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