US Cracks Down: Sanctions Hit Russian Ruble Stablecoin Issuer A7A5 in Bold Move

The US Treasury just dropped the hammer on A7A5—the shadowy issuer behind Russia's Ruble-pegged stablecoin. Geopolitical chess meets crypto sanctions in a play that’s either genius or desperate. Here’s the breakdown.

Why This Matters

Stablecoins aren’t just for trading memecoins anymore. A7A5’s Ruble-backed token allegedly became a backdoor for Moscow to skirt traditional finance bans. Now, the US is cutting off the oxygen supply.

The Irony

Sanctioning a crypto firm while regulators still can’t decide if stablecoins are securities or commodities? Classic. Meanwhile, Tether’s lawyers are probably double-checking their paperwork.

What’s Next

Watch for liquidity crunches in Ruble trading pairs—and the inevitable ‘decentralized’ rebrand of A7A5 by next Tuesday. Because nothing dies in crypto; it just gets a new whitepaper.

Bottom Line: The US just proved stablecoins are weapons of financial warfare. Now if only they’d stop treating them like toys during congressional hearings.

Garantex founder added to OFAC list

Meanwhile, the US OFAC also added Sergey Mendelev to its sanctions list. Mendelev is the co-founder of Garantex, a crypto exchange that is already on the OFAC list for sanctions evasion. Garantex mostly used Tether USDT, and the US Secret Service seized the exchange website in March 2025, freezing $26 million worth of USDT and charging its administrators with money laundering.

Interestingly, the Garantex incident and the freezing of USDT were key reasons behind the growth of A7A5, with Russian entities seeking to evade sanctions turning to a more secure option instead of the easily frozen USDT. Medelev is also the creator of Ruble-backed stablecoin RUBT.

Entities connected to Medelev also got sanctioned. These include Exved, a cross-border payment platform for Russian exporters and importers. The platform, which claims to process tens of billions of rubles in transactions monthly, uses USDT and hides its connection to Russian users.

Others on the OFAC list include Indefi Smartbank, a crypto entity providing technical services to Exved and Grinex, the crypto exchange experts believe replaced Garantex. Grinex was also one of the major exchanges for A7A5 stablecoin volume.

Stablecoins still thriving despite connections to sanctions evasion

Meanwhile, the recent sanctions on entities and individuals using stablecoins to help Russia evade sanctions have not had any major effect on the stablecoin sector. Even with analysts identifying the use of USDT in many such transactions, there has been no allegation of wrongdoing against Tether.

If anything, the stablecoin sector has been thriving, with the market cap growing by $2.882 billion in the last seven days alone. Circulating supply for stablecoins has now reached $271.62 billion, with USDT alone having $164.86 billion.

While Circle USDC has only $65.22 billion, the stablecoin issuer recently announced plans to launch its own Layer-1 blockchain network, just as fintech giant Stripe disclosed similar plans.

Other stablecoins such as Ethena USDe, Paypal PYUSD,  Ripple RLUSD, and Skydollar USDS have all seen substantial growth ranging from 105% to 16.23% in the past 30 days, according to data from Defillama. Interestingly, the A7A5 supply has also increased by 100% within that period, even though it is now below $500 million.

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