FTX CEO Criticized The Industry’s Stance On Russia’s Sanctions

The FTX CEO criticized the industry’s stance on the sanctions imposed on Russia, saying that the exchange policies are likely opposing the regulations so let’s read more today in our latest cryptocurrency news.

The FTX CEO criticized the exchanges for making their Russian policies appear to be against regulation. Bankman-Fried said that he takes issue with the presentation of the policies and that’s not the substance of the policies he also said somewhere else that a lot of processes are in place that restrict the Russian oligarchs from using crypto. The FTX CEO Sam Bankamn-Fried also said that the industry is presenting policies around the Russian sanctions poorly.

In a statement, he said that exchanges have unclear compliance with the sanctions which target Russian oligarchs. Fried said that he was very frustrated with the messaging that the industry has had on this and said that the public statements from some companies are quite unhelpful:

“I think it has been basically anti-regulatory, is how it’s been perceived, and I think that’s how it sounds, and I think that has caused a pretty big perception issue.”

Bankman-Fried argued that this was a huge issue of perception and presentation which is not an issue with the policies set by exchanges:

“I don’t think this is really about the content of the decisions…It’s about the way that they’ve been presented.”

Fried is referring to statements from the CEOs of exchanges and companies like Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken all compiled with the targeted sanctions against Russia while stating that the restrictions on Russia are uncalled for. FTX took a similar path to other exchanges by blocking sanctioned Russian individuals while allowing the non-sanctioned individuals to use the service. The exchange also blocked Russian banks however, FTX was quite vocal about the extent of the restrictions and the CEO suggested that there are a lot of processes happening in place which make it hard for Russian oligarchs to use crypto.

He said that FTX’s relationship with regulators was constructive in enforcing sanctions and he didn’t comment on Senator Elizabeth Warren’s new bill which aims to enforce the sanctions on Russia when asked. The exchange is now the fourth biggest exchange by trading volume which handled $2 billion in trading over the past 24 hours while the FTX US branch handled another $180 million in volume.