Russian cryptocurrency trading platform Grinex ceases operations

Golden Finance reports that on April 21, Russia’s major cryptocurrency trading platform Grinex ceased operations last Wednesday due to a suspected major cyberattack, with reported losses exceeding 1 billion rubles (about 13 million US dollars). The platform claimed on Telegram that the attack showed “signs of involvement by foreign intelligence agencies.”
Grinex is the successor to the previously sanctioned and shut down Garantex trading platform, providing Russia with a financial channel to bypass sanctions; in 2025, it processed nearly 100 billion US dollars in trading volume for the sanctioned stablecoin A7A5.
Experts note that Grinex’s shutdown was not only because of the hacking itself, but more importantly because it removed the trading platform that Russian companies depend on to convert rubles into usable international currencies, dealing “serious damage” to the infrastructure Russia relies on to evade sanctions and making the pressure of sanctions on the Russian economy harder to escape.
The trading platform was sanctioned in August 2025 by Western authorities including the US, UK, and the European Union. Meanwhile, the Russian economy has continued to weaken, with Putin revealing that GDP fell by 1.8% in January–February this year, and that maritime oil exports could drop to the lowest level since 2023.