Kursani, Shpend, juhendajaWiltse, BrianTartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkondTartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut2025-06-262025-06-262025https://hdl.handle.net/10062/111684Cryptocurrencies are rapidly unraveling the effectiveness of economic coercion, allowing sanctioned actors to move value across borders with only fragments of an identity. This thesis examines that shift through a detailed case study of the cryptocurrency exchange Garantex, a platform that processed roughly US $96 billion in digital-asset trades, at least US $1.3 billion of which trace to ransomware crews, darknet vendors and sanctioned oligarchs. Framed by Disruptive Innovation, Transnational Organized Crime, Network and Sanctions-Busting theories, the research adopts a mixed-methods design using both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Results show that, following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Garantex and it's over-the-counter brokers rerouted 82 percent of targeted entities’ crypto through stablecoins, scripted address-rotation and continual re-branding, effectively sidestepping Western blacklists in real time. These findings demonstrate that sanctions architectures anchored in bank-centric choke points are becoming porous, and it highlights the urgent need for coordinated, near-real-time sharing of information and harmonized enforcement practices if economic sanctions are to retain credibility in an era of decentralized, programmable finance.enAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Estoniahttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ee/magistritöödsanktsioonidkrüptorahapiiriülene kuritegevusmitteriiklikud toimijadVenemaaThesis