Blockchain analytics company Elliptic discovers millions in sanctioned crypto wallets

Blockchain security and analytics company Elliptic has discovered a wallet with “significant crypto-asset holdings” worth millions of dollars that has a potential connection with the sanctioned Russian individual or organization.

The company has been continuously investigating with authorities to expose crypto wallets that are linked with sanctioned officials and oligarchs.

During an interview with Bloomberg on Monday, Tom Robinson, the co-founder of Elliptic said that crypto can be used for evading sanctions. However, due to heavy guarding by authorities, it seems that Russia would not be able to pivot crypto assets to circumvent sanctions. 

The report didn’t say how much the cryptocurrency in the wallet was worth or what kind of assets it contained. Robinson went on to say that the magnitude of crypto’s use is questionable, explaining:

“It’s not proving out to be realistic that oligarchs can completely bypass sanctions by moving all their wealth into crypto. Crypto is highly traceable. Crypto can and will be used for sanctions evasion, but it’s not the silver bullet.”

Elliptic finds major criminal activity

More than 400 crypto services have already been detected by Elliptic that allow unidentified users to trade cryptocurrencies for rubles. It also linked over 15 million crypto addresses to illegal activity linked to Russia.

The week before the war broke out, Robinson said, ruble-related activities on several of these sites spiked. Tornado Cash, a service that anonymizes Ethereum and ERC-20 transactions, is an example of a company that has declined to limit its services or comply with sanctions.

“Sanction compliance is very high in general,” Robinson said, referring to high-profile exchange platforms like Coinbase and Binance that have complied with worldwide regulators’ sanction orders.

Elliptic has also been tracking cryptocurrency donations to aid the relief effort in Ukraine. Its most recent update, on March 11 at 23.30 UTC, stated that a total of $63.8 million had been handed to Ukraine via its government and an NGO providing military support.

As TheCoinRise reported, the government of Ukraine has also launched a crypto donation website with the goal to collect $200 million worth of donations.