Russians flood UAE crypto firms to liquidate virtual currency as they seek safe havens
By Team Newsable | First Published Mar 12, 2022, 2:35 PM ISTOne crypto firm has received lots of queries in the past 10 days from Swiss brokers asking to liquidate billions of dollars of bitcoin because their clients are afraid Switzerland will freeze their assets, one executive said, adding that none of the requests had been for less than $2 billion.
Crypto firms in the United Arab Emirates are being deluged with requests to liquidate billions of dollars of virtual currency as Russians seek a safe haven for their fortunes, company executives and financial sources were quoted in Reuters exclusive report.
Some shoppers are utilizing cryptocurrency to put money into actual property within the UAE, whereas others need to use companies there to show their digital cash into laborious forex and stash it elsewhere, the sources mentioned.
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One crypto firm has received lots of queries in the past 10 days from Swiss brokers asking to liquidate billions of dollars of bitcoin because their clients are afraid Switzerland will freeze their assets, one executive said, adding that none of the requests had been for less than $2 billion.
“We’ve had like five or six in the past two weeks. None of them have come off yet – they’ve sort of fallen over at the last minute, which is not rare – but we’ve never had this much interest,” the executive was quoted by Reuters, adding that his firm normally receives an inquiry for a large transaction once a month.
“We have one guy – I don’t know who he is, but he came through a broker – and they’re like, ‘we want to sell 125,000 bitcoin’. And I’m like, ‘what? That’s $6 billion guys’. And they’re like, ‘yeah, we’re going to send it to a company in Australia’,” the executive said.
Switzerland’s financial market supervisor declined to comment on cryptocurrency transaction volumes, Reuters reported.
The country’s economic affairs secretariat (SECO) said in an emailed statement that crypto assets were subject to the same sanctions and measures Switzerland has imposed on “normal” Russian assets and individuals, so if a person is sanctioned their crypto assets must also be frozen in Switzerland.
Dubai, the Gulf’s financial and business center and a growing crypto hub, has long been a magnet for the world’s ultra-rich and the UAE’s refusal to take sides between Western allies and Moscow has signalled to Russians that their money is safe there.
One real estate broker, whose company has partnered with a cryptocurrency service to help people buy property, said, “We’ve been seeing a lot of Russians and even Belarusians coming to Dubai and bringing whatever they can bring, even in crypto.”
A financial source in the UAE confirmed that Russians were buying property in Dubai, using crypto as a way of getting their money out of other jurisdictions and into the Gulf state.
Cryptocurrency exchanges have said, while giving few details, that they are blocking the accounts of Russians sanctioned by the West over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, which Russia calls a “special operation”.
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