“We really don’t believe there is any genuine, large-scale use of A7A5 outside of A7,” Keegan said in an email, referring to the token’s issuer. He added that trading volumes regularly collapse on weekends, as much of the activity appears linked to inter-company transfers involving the Russian exchange Grinex.
Meanwhile, Tom Robinson, co-founder of another blockchain analytics company, Elliptic, also said that the token has lost momentum. He said monthly trading volumes have fallen more than 90% since January and are down 96% from their peak last year, following sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union and United Kingdom, as well as the collapse of Grinex earlier this year.
“The trade and transaction figures selected by A7A5 are consistent with Elliptic’s analysis,” Robinson said. “However, they hide an obvious trend: the A7A5 fails to achieve its goal of allowing Russia to evade sanctions.”
A7A5’s Ogienko denied these claims and said that because the token’s activity primarily takes place in DeFi, it is not fully captured by major crypto data sites. “These outdated principles and metrics do not provide users around the world with objective information about A7A5,” he told CoinDesk in a statement via Telegram.
He said data providers including CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko and DeFiLlama rely too heavily on centralized exchange data, creating what he claims “a generally discriminatory approach, contrary to United Nations principles.”
