CryptoKitties and the Flow blockchain (NFT project NBA Top Shot and others) are offspring of the NFT company Dapper Labs, which, having the headquarters of its payment service in Europe, must submit to the jurisprudence of the old continent.
The eighth sanctions package enacted by Brussels and countersigned by the twenty-seven member countries of the European Union is only the umpteenth in a long series of sanctions packages aimed at Russia’s oligarchs and the manufacturing and economic sectors in order to weaken them.
In the wake of what it calls “fake” secession votes in four Ukrainian regions, this umpteenth pronouncement by the twenty-seven states provides for restrictions even in the crypto world despite the fact that Russia’s recent regulatory framework has pushed the country’s energies to open up to this very asset to (among other things) circumvent precisely the repeated international sanctions.
The Duma (the Russian parliament) had recently implemented the framework law authorizing international cryptocurrency exchange after years of shuttling in a technical debate between President Vladimir Putin, the economy minister and the Russian Central Bank.
Moscow immediately suffers a severe backlash because of this sanctions package as it severely limits the possibility of making money from this asset at least to and from the countries of the Atlantic pact.
Dapper Labs blocks Russian crypto addresses
Crypto business for the transcontinental country is still possible in a huge portion of the planet: Brazil, India and China on all are large virtual markets with which Moscow can have relationships in terms of digital currencies (BTC, ETH, XRP etc.), NFTs or instruments related to this world such as ETFs etc.
“It is now forbidden to provide cryptocurrency wallets, accounts or custody services of any value to accounts with links to Russia.”
Users of any blocked accounts are able to see their NFTs but cannot interact in any way.
In the post announcing the restrictions in place, Dapper Labs explained that it will not be possible to move funds, use tokens in any way, and of course, sell or buy NFTs.
Previous limits imposed by the seventh tranche of sanctions consisted of a limit on the amount of transactions to and from crypto wallets traceable to Russian users or addresses in the amount of €10,000, while with last Thursday’s tightening, Russian users cannot transfer funds, whether crypto or other to Europe and vice versa.
The OKX exchange also joins the EU directives by promptly notifying its users with the specifications clearly explained by Brussels regarding the movements to and from the Kremlin, which are suspended effective immediately.
The Old Continent’s sanctions are known to be short-lived and the effects can only be appreciated after some time has passed, however this further crackdown, despite an abrupt replacement of Moscow’s own business with the EU by its Chinese partner, risks pushing Putin even further into a corner as he still has a chance to end the conflict (or perhaps initiate an even greater one) with the use of the nuclear weapon.
