Centralized exchanges (CEX) and CEOs from companies such as Binance, Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) and Kraken have all stated they would only freeze the assets of Russian clients specifically targeted by Western sanctions — not that of everyday Russian users.
A few days prior, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, had called for “all major crypto exchanges to block [wallet] addresses of Russians” and “also to sabotage ordinary users [by freezing their assets].” In explaining why he was not preemptively banning all Russians (though, Coinbase is not available in Russia), Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, specifically wrote: