- According to an official blog post from Coinbase, it has blocked “over 25,000 addresses related to Russian individuals or entities.
- They have taken this step to play their part in these critical economic sanctions, Coinbase implements a multi-layered, global sanctions program and as a result, they have taken a few steps.
According to an official blog post from Coinbase, the leading US-based cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, has blocked “over 25,000 addresses related to Russian individuals or entities. According to their blog post to play their part in these critical economic sanctions, Coinbase implements a multi-layered, global sanctions program and as a result, they have taken a few steps.
As a first step, they have blocked access to sanctioned actors. Explaining the first step Coinbase mentioned that it checks account applications against lists of sanctioned individuals or entities, including those maintained by the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, United Nations, Singapore, Canada, and Japan, during the onboarding process.
They further explained that individuals and entities must provide identifying information, such as their name and country of residence, in order to open a Coinbase account. Before allowing an individual to transact, we screen this information through an independent vendor. Customers who reside in a sanctioned country or region, or who have been identified as a sanctioned individual or entity, are not permitted to open an account on our platform.
They said that Coinbase uses geofencing controls. They use these controls to prevent anyone with an IP address in a sanctioned geography from accessing the Coinbase website, as well as their products and services. Coinbase routinely subjects its sanctions compliance programme to internal testing as well as third-party independent audits.
The second step they have taken is to detect attempts at evasion. If someone opens a Coinbase account and is later sanctioned, they will use this ongoing screening process to identify and close that account. Because sanction evaders frequently attempt to conceal their identities, Coinbase actively works to map transactions beyond the entities and individuals specifically flagged by governments. This enables them to identify potentially related parties and block accounts linked to prohibited actors.
As a third and final step, they have Anticipated threats. Through this step, Coinbase proactively identified over 1,200 additional addresses potentially associated with the sanctioned individual using advanced blockchain analysis, which they added to their internal blocklist.
Coinbase further said in their blog post that today it has blocked over 25,000 addresses associated with Russian individuals or entities. They believe that those addresses are involved in illegal activity, many of which they have discovered through their own proactive investigations. Coinbase shared these addresses with the government after identifying them to help with sanctions enforcement.
