Sanctions Evasion in Crypto: How Blockchains Are Used to Bypass Global Restrictions
When governments impose sanctions evasion, the act of circumventing financial restrictions placed on countries, entities, or individuals by international bodies. Also known as financial circumvention, it has become a major focus for regulators as crypto enables cross-border transactions without traditional banking oversight. This isn’t theoretical—countries like Russia, Iran, and North Korea have turned to crypto to move money, buy weapons, and fund operations after being cut off from SWIFT and Western banks.
Crypto exchanges, platforms that allow users to trade digital assets. Also known as crypto trading platforms, it have become key tools in this game. Thailand’s 2025 ban on foreign P2P platforms like Bybit and OKX wasn’t just about fraud—it was a direct response to users using these services to bypass U.S. and UN sanctions. Similarly, unregulated stablecoins like EURC, while legitimate for EU residents, can be repurposed by bad actors to move value across borders without triggering bank alerts. And when a token like Apple Network (ANK) pops up with no team and no liquidity, it’s often not just a scam—it’s a laundering vehicle.
Regulators aren’t sitting idle. The SEC’s 2024 enforcement fines jumped over 3,000%, targeting platforms that ignored KYC rules or allowed sanctioned users to trade. India’s strict 30% tax on mined coins and 1% TDS isn’t just about revenue—it’s a surveillance tool. Australia’s new 2025 rules force exchanges to track every transaction, and China’s AI-powered monitoring of mining rigs shows how deeply governments are digging into blockchain data. Even something as technical as Merkle Trees, a cryptographic structure used to verify transaction integrity in blockchains becomes a double-edged sword: it makes chains secure, but also makes it easier to trace illicit flows when combined with on-chain analytics.
What you’ll find below are real cases where crypto met sanctions: the airdrops that became laundering channels, the exchanges that vanished overnight, the tokens that had no use except to move value quietly. These aren’t hypotheticals. They’re happening now. And if you’re trading, investing, or just watching the space, you need to know how the lines are being redrawn.
- By Eva van den Bergh
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- 6 Nov 2025
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