The Russian ruble-backed stablecoin A7A5 has facilitated over $6.1 billion in cross-border transactions since August 2025, despite key operators facing U.S. sanctions, according to a Financial Times report. This activity occurred after more than 80% of A7A5's supply was destroyed and reissued using a smart contract function called "destroyBlackFunds", which labeled tokens as "dirtyShares" and erased transactional links to sanctioned wallets tied to exchanges like Grinex and Garantex.
Following sanctions imposed on Grinex in August 2025—deemed a successor to Garantex, which was blacklisted in March 2022 for ties to hacking, terrorism, and drug trafficking—A7A5 administrators zeroed out wallet balances and re-minted tokens in a new address identified as TNpJj. This method severed on-chain history, complicating traceability. The TNpJj wallet has since processed billions, mirroring patterns of earlier sanctioned accounts, with peak activity during Moscow business hours.
A7A5, registered in Kyrgyzstan by Old Vector (also sanctioned in August), operates on Tron and Ethereum blockchains and was recently granted formal digital financial asset status by Russian authorities. It is backed one-to-one by rubles held at state-owned Promsvyazbank, which holds a 49% stake in the A7 cross-border payments network and has facilitated over $86 billion in transactions within 10 months. Despite denials of illicit activity by A7A5 executive Oleg Ogienko, the stablecoin's ties to sanctioned entities led to its removal from TOKEN2049's event agenda. Russia's Central Bank plans a comprehensive audit of crypto holdings in early 2026 to inform regulatory policy.
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