Crypto Exchange Okx Blocked by Russia’s Telecom Watchdog – This week, Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, also known as Roskomnadzor, added the domain name of crypto exchange Okx to its list of sites containing information whose distribution is prohibited in the Russian Federation. The decision was made by the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office.
According to a report by the Russian business news portal RBC, the Seychelles-based company is one of the few big coin trading platforms that has not put limitations on Russian customers despite escalating Western sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.
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Roskomnadzor informed RBC Crypto that Roskomnadzor was urged by Russian prosecutors to block access to its website for dissemination of unreliable socially significant financial information. The agency’s press service elaborated: “The site published information related to the activities of financial pyramids, as well as information on the provision of financial services by persons who do not have the right to provide them in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation.”
Okx, which includes around 350 digital assets and has a daily trading volume of approximately $1.5 billion, has not commented yet. However, according to Russian legal experts, in the lack of a thorough legal framework, any trade can be outlawed in Russia. According to Criminal Defense Firm lawyer Daniil Gorkov, this would deliver an irreversible hit to the country’s cryptocurrency market.
Roskomnadzor has a history of shutting down websites relating to cryptocurrencies. In September 2020, the largest cryptocurrency trading platform in the world, Binance, was temporarily restricted. The prominent exchange aggregator Bestchange.ru has been blocked multiple times, and so have crypto news outlets. In each of these instances, the limits were subsequently relaxed after the prosecution failed to convince the courts.
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