EU adopted its 21st sanctions package on July 23, adding Huobi Global S.A., the entity behind the HTX exchange, to a transaction ban that will take effect on August 23. The measure prohibits EU operators from transacting with HTX but does not freeze its assets.

The action follows Britain’s May 26 designation of Huobi Global and related platforms for alleged support of Russian sanctions evasion. UK authorities said they had reasonable grounds to suspect the exchange facilitated financial flows to entities linked to Russia’s A7 cross‑border payments network, which they said moved more than $1.5 billion to Kremlin‑linked parties. Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs identified HTX as the exchange involved.

After the UK sanctions, HTX rotated its on‑chain wallets across Tron, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and Solana, replacing addresses frequently and often within hours. TRM Labs reported that this rapid turnover made static sanction lists outdated quickly and complicated compliance screening, which now must track transaction patterns and wallet relationships rather than fixed addresses.

ZachXBT, a blockchain investigator, said the UK action reduced the usefulness of certain compliance signals, describing the resulting “tainting” of on‑chain activity as severe. He noted that HTX serves a large retail user base in Asia, differentiating it from previously sanctioned platforms such as Huione, Blender and Hydra.

The EU’s new package also introduces a mechanism that could prohibit transactions between EU crypto providers and services operating in third countries where platforms are used to evade Russia sanctions. For the first time, the bloc listed 14 crypto‑related platforms based in Georgia, Panama, the United Arab Emirates, the Marshall Islands, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus, including firms such as EXMO, BitPapa and Rapira. It also added designations tied to the A7 network, which the EU says has expanded into Nigeria and Africa and is linked to Moldovan politician Ilan Shor and to Promsvyazbank, a Russian state‑owned lender connected to the defense sector. A7 operates a ruble‑backed stablecoin, A7A5, that has become a major settlement tool within the network.

The expanded sanctions reflect a broader trend of crypto activity shifting after individual exchanges are targeted, and they give the EU the ability to follow those flows beyond single platforms.