Key Takeaways:
- Roskomnadzor, Russia’s internet censorship organization, has revealed in a record that Russia has barred access to OKX.
- According to sources, the Prosecutor General’s Office issued the directive.
Roskomnadzor, the country’s state media regulator and internet censorship body, has data indicating that Russia has blocked the website of the cryptocurrency exchange OKX.
The Seychelles-registered cryptocurrency exchange, according to Roskomnadzor, the Russian agency in charge of overseeing internet restrictions, released data related to “financial pyramid activities.”
According to data from Roskomnadzor, Russia’s internet censorship organization, a search for the exchange’s domain reveals that the site was prohibited in accordance with article 15.3 of the country’s law on information, information technologies, and information protection.
The data offers defense against, among other things, the dissemination of false information, threats against financial institutions, and encouragement of extreme behavior. However, no explicit justification for the website block has yet been provided.
According to the founder of Roskomsvoboda, Artem Kozlyuk, even the proprietors of blocked websites frequently have no idea why they have been blocked, and the only way to learn why is to submit complaints to Roskomnadzor.
Roskomsvoboda is a non-governmental organization (NGO) that promotes open self-regulatory systems and the protection of digital rights for Russian Internet users.
Okx.com is also mentioned in the Roskomsvoboda roster of blacklisted domains maintained by the neighborhood NGO.
The group, which is focused on tracking online censorship, adopts a name resembling that of Russia’s censorship agency but substitutes “svoboda” for “nadzor” (which means “oversight” in Russian).
OKX is not the only exchange that Russia has targeted; in June 2020, a local court also restricted Binance’s website, as Gleb Kostarev, the regional head of Asia for Binance, originally revealed in a Facebook post.
At the time, Binance asserted that it had not been notified of the blacklisting until three months after it had been put into effect and that it had not received any complaints from the authorities.
Since then, Russian institutions have been working quickly to determine where cryptocurrency fits within the country’s current regulatory system. For a while, there was a disagreement between the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Russia about whether or not cryptocurrency should be outlawed completely in the nation.
The central bank and finance minister of Russia has previously approved a bill that governs international cryptocurrency transfers. The government wants to regulate the creation, transfer, and use of digital assets, including international cryptocurrency payments.
