CoinDesk
The UK's Foreign Office sanctioned crypto exchange HTX this week, citing "reasonable grounds to suspect" the platform was helping Russia sustain its war in Ukraine by cooperating with A7A5, a ruble-linked stablecoin issued by already-sanctioned firm A7 LLC. HTX pushed back firmly, saying A7A5's listing application was explicitly rejected following its internal due diligence and compliance review.
A7A5 executive Oleg Ogienko confirmed HTX's account, telling CoinDesk that the stablecoin approached all leading centralized exchanges for a listing — and was turned away by every one of them, with secondary sanctions fears cited as the reason. Ogienko framed the rejections as the industry's loss rather than A7A5's, noting the project has since pivoted to a DeFi-native business model.
TheBlock
WuBlockchain