Blockchain Gaming Firm Animoca Blocks Russian Users

Blockchain gaming giant Animoca Brands is breaking ranks with most of its peers and blocking Russia from its platform in response to the invasion of Ukraine, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday (March 2).

While sanctions against Russia continue from most corners of the map and from numerous industries, the majority of major crypto firms are still working with Russia. 

Animoca’s move will have an impact on subsidiaries Gamee, Lympo, and some others, but it won’t negatively affect the company because the Russian user base is on the smaller side, Animoca co-founder Yat Siu told Bloomberg.

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“The legal advice we’ve been receiving is we now have to impose some restrictions,” Siu said. “It’s a sanctioned country on par with North Korea. The moment we end up doing business in those areas, we might ourselves become financially excluded from the financial system,” Siu said.

Headquartered in Hong Kong and launched in 2014, Animoca said that in addition to blocking the addresses of Russian users, it will also stop selling shares to Russian investors. 

Gamee announced on Twitter “Ukraine, we stand with you,” and said that it’s closing its services to Russia. Lympo said in a Medium blog post that it would stop publishing Russian athlete NFTs, stop onboarding new Russian athletes, and drop negotiations for new partnerships with all Russian athletes.

Read more: Russian Cryptocurrencies Could Be Part of Future Sanctions

Aside from Animoca having a library of global name brands from companies like Formula 1 and Disney, the company has backed over 150 firms, among them game-maker Dapper Labs and nonfungible marketplace OpenSea. Those individual companies will make their own decisions regarding Russia, Siu said.

A disruption of Russia’s cryptocurrency sector could be on the table for future sanctions, but it would have to be done without affecting the worldwide crypto market. Crypto is a bigger part of Russia’s financial systems than other countries.