According to Bloomberg News, Elliptic, the crypto forensics firm, revealed that it has informed the authorities of a digital wallet linked to oligarchs and sanctioned Russian officials. The wallet contains crypto asset holdings that are significant and worth millions of dollars; while speaking in an interview on Monday, the same was revealed by Tom Robinson, the co-founder of Elliptic.
More on the findings
The finding comes following a heated debate on whether these digital tokens can be used to evade additional sanctions imposed on the Russian oligarchs and the other officials during this ongoing Russia and Ukraine war. Since authorities have seized overseas fiat currencies and yachts of the oligarchs, some are worried that it is pretty likely that they may turn to the Bitcoin and Tether, or coins that enable privacy.
Bloomberg News also reports that Robinson said crypto might be used to evade sanctions, but the question is if that is the case on what scale the evasion is. He said it is not realistic for oligarchs to completely dodge the sanctions by shifting their wealth into digital currencies. He stated that crypto could be traced and used for evading sanctions, but it is a silver bullet.
The clients of Elliptic comprise crypto exchanges and government agencies, and Elliptic has zeroed in on more than 400 virtual asset services that have permitted anonymous clients to invest in crypto with the help of rubles. Earlier in the last week, it was found that the activities were almost three times in comparison to what it was a week earlier, even before the outbreak of the war towards the end of February.
Bloomberg News reports that Elliptic has linked 15 million and perhaps more cryptocurrency addresses Russia’s criminal activities. It has also found out several hundreds and thousands of crypto-related addresses linked to sanctioned actors based in Russia and their associates, said Robinson.
Crypto exchanges ranging from Binance to Coinbase Global Inc. have stated that they will adhere to the imposed sanctions. However, both exchanges have said that they would not cater to all Russian customers, which is what the Ukrainian government had desired. Robinson also noted that, in general, the sanction compliance level was pretty high.
