Krambambula and prospectives of Russian Crypto Economy
Russia, Russia, Russia!
Everyone who follows news of the crypto industry, has heard “Russia” in this context at least several times during the last months. While Russia was lagging behind the rest of the world in this sense for the last couple of years, it started paying attention to crypto in 2017 and finally acted on Jan, 25 with the Digital Asset Regulation Bill. So, as a citizen of Russia and CEO of a blockchain-based company (Native Video Box operates internationally), I decided to take a closer look at that and see what we can expect from our government.
First of all, it should be noted that Russian people’s knowledge about cryptocurrency is sadly low. According to Center for the Study of Public Opinion, only a half of Russians even heard about Bitcoin. At the same time, over 15% of these people believe that investing in Bitcoin is illegal in Russia. I guess half of them are sure that crypotocurrency is a kind of scum.
Unfortunately, I have to say that our government “crypto-literacy” is on the same level. The first concern of the Russian government related to cryptocurrencies was its officials’ digital assets. Ministry of Labor wanted to oblige the state officials to declare their cryptocurrency assets, but changed its mind shortly after, surprisingly equating Bitcoins and Ethereums in their ownership to presents.
Then came “more serious” measures.
In October 2017, our Ministry of Finances first stated its plans to regulate Russian crypto market. They presented the above-mentioned Digital Asset Regulation Bill four months later. It speaks about limitations for non-licensed ICO investors, strict ICO policy and authorized cryptocurrency exchange operators only. At the same time, our prime-minister publicly predicts disappearance of cryptocurrencies (“Ooops! Noah is gone…”). Then, the head of Russian Central Bank argues that crypto currency exchanges should be illegal.
To make a long story short — Russian officials do believe that cryptocurrency is just a scum.
But take a look a bit to the west — I mean Belorussia. Who’s in charge there? Mr. Lukashenko, “Potato Kim Jong-un” and “Europe’s last dictator” has also introduced a new bill related to cryptocurrency market regulations.
Great, it seems that we can suspect at least mass shootings of tokenholders and bitcoin miners?
Surprise! — instead we have very good and mature legislation concerning mining and cryptocurrencies, presenting legal field for both. For example, as a country with the surplus and low cost of electricity, Belorussia believes mining will create additional demand for electricity on a nationwide scale. This approach reveals professionals behind the country’s new crypto legislation.
It doesn’t hurt when top authorities call crypto a worldwide scam. It doesn’t even hurt that much when they make stupid laws. After all, Russia is not the first one who does it. But it really hurts when the country with soviet style economy and the president who called internet “garbage” not so long ago, is so far ahead of Russia.
I spent my entire morning googling “Minsk landscapes”. It seems that soon all crypto guys (and then the entire digital community) of Moscow will eat draniki and drink krambambula (belorussian drink made of honey and pepper — google it! it’s worth it) and zubrovka.
