Hi HODLers.
I have been taking time off my blogging hobby over the past few days as I had some personal objective and the daily news of the Ukraine/Russia conflict kind of made me feel down and got me thinking.
As I planned to write today, I felt like writing on an absolutely different topic before I saw this piece of news: 'Ukraine Asks Exchanges to Freeze Russian, Belarusian Crypto Accounts'
I thought we used it to get some funding and resources to the Ukrainians and now we need to shut it down unilateraly to "innocent citizens?"
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation, has asked "all major crypto exchanges to block addresses of Russian users."
Fedorov tweeted his request, explaining that "it's crucial to freeze not only the addresses linked to Russian and Belarusian politicians, but also to sabotage ordinary users."
Binance, one of the world's leading cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume, said it has no plan to freeze user accounts in Russia.
Binance was asked about it and through a spoke person replied the following:
"We are not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users' accounts. Crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe. To unilaterally decide to ban people's access to their crypto would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists. However, we are taking the steps necessary to ensure we take action against those that have had sanctions levied against them while minimizing impact to innocent users. Should the international community widen those sanctions further, we will apply those aggressively as well,”
Jesse Powell went out of his way with a very nice thread. He is taking the risk to be lapidated at this specific moment but he has a very rational thought and a fundamental pro-freedom's posture.
I particularly like this quote warning Russian citizens:
"Russians should be aware that such a requirement could be imminent."
So for this, Thank you Jesse.
Stay safe out there,
