Hillary Clinton urges Biden administration to push crypto exchanges to block Russian users

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has criticized the Biden administration and European governments for not pushing cryptocurrency exchanges to end transactions with Russian users. She believes that regulators “should carefully examine how they can prevent crypto-markets from giving Russia an escape route, both for government and private transactions inside and outside Russia.”

Hillary Clinton is disappointed that the crypto exchange do not block all Russian users

Hillary Clinton, a former First Lady, US Senator, Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, sharply criticized the Biden administration, the Treasury and the European government on Monday night at MSNBC for allowing Russians to use cryptocurrencies as an escape route.

Commenting on some large cryptocurrency exchanges that refuse to block the accounts of all Russian users, Clinton said:

“I was disappointed to see that some of the so-called crypto echanges, not all, but some, refuse to end transactions with Russia because of some, I don’t know, philosophy of libertarianism or whatever.

Everyone should do their utmost to isolate Russian economic activity right now. “

On Sunday, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov on Twitter called all major cryptocurrency exchanges to block the addresses of all Russian users, including regular users. “It is essential to freeze not only addresses associated with Russian and Belarusian politicians, but also to sabotage ordinary users.”

However, several large cryptocurrency exchanges said they would not comply and refused to freeze the accounts of all Russian users. These include Binance, Coinbase and Kraken. However, exchanges will meet the requirements for sanctions.

Kraken CEO Jesse Powell explained that his exchange could freeze Russian users ‘accounts only if there was a legal demand from the government, referring to what happened in Canada during the Freedom Convoy truckers’ protest.

However, Powell recommends that anyone who fears the freezing of their accounts should move their assets from the exchanges and put them in their own administration.

Clinton believes that governments should make more efforts to prevent the misuse of cryptocurrencies to circumvent sanctions. The former First Lady and Foreign Minister said:

“In this particular case of Ukraine, I think the Treasury and Europeans should look closely at how they can prevent crypto-markets from giving Russia an escape route.

I hope that someone from the Ministry of Finance is trying to figure out how to keep the leaky valves in the cryptocurrency market in check, which could allow Russia to escape the full weight of sanctions.”

Already in November, Clinton called on the Biden administration to regulate cryptocurrencies and warned against manipulation by Russia and China. She also warned that the cryptocurrency could destabilize nations and undermine the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.