4 October, Roskomnadzor, at the request of the General Prosecutor’s Office, blocked access to the OKX cryptocurrency exchange’s site within Russia. This is confirmed by monitoring data from the civil society group RosKomSvoboda.
According to the registry entry, the trading platform is alleged to have violated the law on dissemination of information.
The head of RosKomSvoboda, Artem Kozlyuk, explained that the General Prosecutor’s Office is authorised to issue blocking orders for internet resources in three circumstances:
- for distributing extremist materials;
- for distributing fake and unreliable information;
- by order of the Bank of Russia declaring the site fraudulent.
“In this case, it is not possible to say exactly which basis was chosen. But most likely this happened by decision of the central bank. In Russia, cryptocurrencies are not legalised, so Russian authorities and courts may take arbitrary decisions to block sites related to cryptocurrency as disseminating illegal information,” said Artem Kozlyuk.
He also confirmed that he cannot access the exchange’s site without a VPN.
Access to the OKX site is restricted for disseminating inaccurate information of public financial significance, the Roskomnadzor press service said.
“The site published information related to the activities of financial pyramids, as well as information about providing financial services by persons not authorised to provide them under Russian law,” the agency explained in a comment to RBC.
OKX community moderators on Discord clarified that, on its side, the exchange had not imposed restrictions on Russian users and continues to provide services to them in full.
“We do not recommend using a VPN to access OKX, as this will trigger our risk controls and may lead to account suspension,” said the exchange’s support representative in ForkLog’s commentary.
Artem Kozlyuk called the platform’s recommended refusal to use VPNs a ‘very odd’ decision.
“VPN is used to protect users’ communications. Its presence is especially important in case of restricted access to internet resources. Essentially urging users to weaken their network protections by the exchange’s support is a dangerous statement. We do not recommend users to abandon VPNs or other means of protecting their communications,” he added.
The trading platform says it will publish an official statement on the situation in the near future.
In late June Roskomnadzor once again blocked the cryptocurrency news portal Bits.media over a section containing an exchanger aggregator. The editors temporarily disabled the page, after which Roskomnadzor allowed the host to restore access by Russian providers to the site.
Read ForkLog’s bitcoin news on our Telegram — cryptocurrency news, prices and analysis.