Russian Crypto Flows Could Stain Global Market, Bankers Say

Russia now accounts for the largest crypto turnover in Central and Eastern Europe: $376 billion over the past year, representing 40 % of the country’s cross-border trade. Sanctions pushed companies and individuals to shift payments into digital assets after conventional banking channels were cut off.

Association representative Goncharova notes that foreign exchanges and compliance tools are already tagging Russian-linked transactions as high-risk, sometimes tracing back 20–50 steps. The more aggressively this happens, the larger the share of coins that could end up labelled as sanctioned.

She argues Russia should mirror the practice by marking flows from unfriendly counterparties. Without such measures, she warns, the growing pool of flagged crypto will eventually undermine efforts to bypass restrictions.

The danger of a parallel market for “tainted” tokens was earlier flagged by Vladislav Kochetkov, head of Finam: assets that have touched sanctioned addresses risk trading in isolation from the wider global market.

Based on information from cryptonews.net