Roskomnadzor bans Russia’s largest crypto OTC aggregator

Russia’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor has blocked access to the country’s largest crypto aggregator platform.

The Russian telecoms watchdog Roskomnadzor has blocked access to BestChange, one of the largest crypto over-the-counter aggregators in Eastern Europe and Russia. As of press time, the regulator hasn’t explained the reason, though the website is on the list of blocked platforms.

A spokesperson for BestChange said the platform’s lawyers “already working on unblocking [access to] the website,” though they did not disclose the reason behind the ban. Founded in 2007, BestChange is one of the oldest and largest aggregators of crypto OTC platforms.

It’s been blocked before — first in 2017 when a St. Petersburg court banned it, claiming Bitcoin (BTC) was a monetary surrogate and blockchain’s irreversible transactions made enforcement tricky. That ban was lifted in 2018, but in 2019, Roskomnadzor blocked it again, only to remove the restriction a few months later.

Now, the ban comes almost six months after Russia introduced a new law on Bitcoin mining and crypto ads. The law blocks ads for digital assets and anything that helps move crypto around, including services that let users transfer it using Russian infrastructure.

Following the law’s introduction, Russia’s largest search engine, Yandex, quickly updated its ad policy, banning promotions for crypto exchanges, smart contracts, mining, initial coin offerings, and services that track wallets for money laundering.