Hillary Clinton slams crypto exchanges for ignoring Russian sanctions


The United States has imposed heavy sanctions on Russia following the country's invasion of Ukraine. These sanctions have resulted in frozen assets for Russian citizens, affecting the military and the country's oligarchs. However, as former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has pointed out, those sanctions are being ignored by crypto markets.

Hillary Clinton criticises crypto backing Russia

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, Ukrainian vice president Mykhailo Fedorov asked crypto exchanges to free Russian blockchain addresses. The politician explained that blocking the country from exchanging cryptocurrency, would weaken the country's attack.

While a couple of crypto exchanges have decided to cut off Russian users, not all of them have. For example, the biggest exchanges — Coinbase and Binance — aren't getting involved in the situation. This means that Russia can still freely trade its crypto assets through the most popular marketplaces.

Speaking to MSNBC, former First Lady Hillary Clinton expressed disappointment at the decisions of crypto exchanges. Clinton explained that the platforms are disrupting Western plans to punish and isolate Russia. She said:

“I was disappointed to see that some of the so-called crypto exchanges, not all of them, but some of them, are refusing to end transactions with Russia. [We should] do as much as possible to isolate Russian economic activity right now.”

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Reigning in the crypto market

During her interview with MSNBC, Hillary Clinton explained that this situation could result in governments taking on the crypto market. The former presidential candidate said: “I think the Treasury Department, I think the Europeans should look at how they can prevent the crypto markets from giving an escape hatch to Russia.”

This isn't Clinton’s first run in with the crypto market either. Via CryptoPotato, Clinton explained last year that the existence of cryptocurrency could end up destabilising entire nations. As such, the former First Lady has been against the widespread adoption of the digital currency.

“I hope nation-states start paying greater attention to is the rise of cryptocurrencies,” she said in November. “What looks like a very interesting and somewhat exotic effort to literally mine new coins in order to trade with them has the potential for undermining currencies, for undermining the role of the dollar as the reserve currency, for destabilizing nations, perhaps starting with small ones but going much larger.”

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