EU cryptocurrency sanctions do not work — the number of Russians using cryptocurrency is growing

Colin Wu, a well-known cryptocurrency journalist, published statistics on his blog: it turned out that in June, Russians generated most of the traffic for the largest crypto exchanges. Thus, the invaders generated 6% of traffic for Binance, 19% for Bybit, 10% for Gate, 16% for Bitget, and 17% for Huobi.

According to Wu, last month, the total traffic to centralized trading platforms decreased by 8%. Huobi (-37%), Bitget (-29%), and Bitfinex (-27%) showed the worst performance. The top three in terms of growth were Deribit (46%), OKX (11%), and Bybit (5%).

At the same time, the total volume of spot trading on CEX increased by 10.4%. Bitmart (61%), Upbit (48%), and Bybit (35%) are the leaders in this indicator. The worst performers were Crypto.com (-18%), Huobi (-17%), and MEXC (-11%).

The average volume of futures trading also increased by 9.5%. The leaders were Bitmart (46%), Deribit (15%), and KuCoin (14%). Crypto.com (-29%), Gate (-17%), and BitMEX (-5%) showed the highest negative performance.

Since the end of 2022, citizens of the terrorist state have been trying to withdraw their cryptocurrencies through the darknet to circumvent EU sanctions. Last year in October, the EU tightened sanctions against the killer country regarding cryptocurrency transactions in the eurozone. Companies with a European license were banned from opening accounts and crypto wallets for citizens of the aggressor state.

According to analysts, as of today, a total of 10,000 to 20,000 Russians have had their accounts blocked on cryptocurrency exchanges, and the amount of funds under sanctions exceeds RUB 2−3 billion in cryptocurrency.