By Hannah Lang

(Reuters) – Utah-based cryptocurrency exchange CoinZoom is pausing applications for new accounts within Russia following the country’s escalating conflict in Ukraine, the company’s chief executive officer told Reuters.

CoinZoom may be a smaller-known cryptocurrency exchange but it was the first one to block new Russian operations. Most crypto exchanges resist the call to ban Russian users, even though the Ukrainian government has repeatedly asked them to.

Coinbase (NASDAQ :), Kraken, Binance and Binance stated that they will respect Western sanctions but would not stop Russian users unless there was a law to do so.

Todd Crosland is the Chief Executive Officer of CoinZoom. He stated that it was not clear how customers would pay for new CoinZoom accounts, given Russia’s withdrawals from major payment institutions.

“It’s a very fluid situation in Russia right now and it’s very fluid with regulators, so being able to fund your account with a wire or a debit card, Mastercard, Visa (NYSE:) — all of those funding mechanisms are being basically eliminated for Russian customers right now,” Crosland said in an interview.

Crosland said that CoinZoom has not blocked Russian account holders from CoinZoom but was screening them for possible sanctions.

On Saturday, U.S. payments firms Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc (NYSE:) said they were suspending operations in Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.

The refusal to block Russian users on crypto-exchanges has been criticized, especially after Mykhailo Fedorov (Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine) asked them to stop Russian users from accessing their digital wallets.

Jesse Powell from Kraken stated that Kraken’s continued operation in Russia was due to the “libertarian principles” of crypto currencies.

A spokesperson for Binance said in a statement that banning access to crypto “would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists.”