Fierce data debate surrounds whether approved Russian crypto tokens actually work to evade Western blocs

“I don’t think there is any real use of A7A5 at scale outside of A7,” Keegan said in an email, referring to the token issuer. He added that trading volumes routinely collapse on weekends due to a lot of activity related to corporate trading involving Russia-linked exchange Grinex.

Meanwhile, Tom Robinson, co-founder of Elliptic, another blockchain analytics firm, also said the token had lost momentum. He said monthly trading volume has fallen more than 90% since January and 96% since its peak last year due to the Greenex bankruptcy earlier this year, as well as sanctions from the US, EU and UK.

“The select deals and transaction figures provided by A7A5 are consistent with Elliptic’s analysis,” Robinson said. “But they hide clear trends that suggest the A7A5 is failing in its goal of enabling Russian sanctions evasion.”

A7A5’s Ogienko denied these claims and said token activity is mostly taking place in DeFi and is therefore not fully captured by major cryptocurrency data sites. “These outdated principles and indicators do not provide objective information about A7A5 to users around the world,” he said in a statement sent to CoinDesk via Telegram.

He said data providers including CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko and DeFiLlama are relying too heavily on centralized exchange data, creating a “generally discriminatory approach that goes against United Nations principles.”