Last Updated on October 6, 2022 by Bitfinsider

On October 4, the Russian state media monitoring service Roskomnadzor blocked the website of cryptocurrency exchange OKX. According to TASS, the website was blocked “at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office for the dissemination of untrustworthy socially significant financial information.”

According to Roskomnadzor, OKX “published information related to the activities of financial pyramids, as well as information on the provision of financial services by persons who do not have the right to provide them” in violation of Russian law. Although the website is blocked in Russia, it can still be accessed using a VPN.

According to another local report, the administration of the OKX Russian-language Discord channel stated, “We do not recommend using a VPN when accessing OKX as this will trigger our risk controls and may result in the account being banned.”

OKX, which was founded in China and is now based in Seychelles, is not abiding by Western sanctions imposed on Russia. It recently failed to respond to a request from South Korean authorities to freeze accounts associated with Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon, and is best known for its sponsorships of Manchester City soccer and auto racing.

Previously, similar website blockings occurred and were successfully challenged in Russian courts. Binance was blocked in Russia between September 2020 and January 2021, but the decision was overturned by a regional court. Russia blocked six cryptocurrency news websites in 2020, but one of them, Bits.media, was able to have the block lifted a week later by a district court decision, despite remaining on the agency’s blacklist.