The Current State of Russian Crypto Market
We get more and more questions from investors and the rest of community about cryptocurrency market in Russia. It turns out that there are no enough sources of information on English language, which is surprising. So I’m going to tell you in this article about the current situation.
In the autumn 2017 there was a first information about legalizing of cryptocurrency.
28 of December 2017. This is the date when the Ministry of Finance(Minfin) and the Central Bank of Russia published a Bill about digital assets regulations. Definitions are provided in the Bill about cryptocurrency, including bitcoin, tokens, mining and ICO.
At that time finance Minister Anton Siluanov offered to finalize this document. “I look at the Bill project, it’s very limited. They give description of terminology and that’s all. I think, that the law must regulate activities…it must be comprehensive legislation”.
A lot of people around here have told that this Bill is intended to legalize buying of cryptocurrencies and protect citizens from frauds.
Parallel to this, there has been a discussion for some time now in Russia about the creation of Russian national cryptocurrency — cryptoruble. But the Minfin and the Central Bank do not see such possibility at present.
25 of January 2018 one more version of draft law “about digital financial assets” was published, under which:
· Mining was recognized as business activity
· Cryptocurrencies and tokens are considered as types of financial assets
· Smart-contracts are considered as digital contracts
· Traders across cryptocurrency exchanges must be registered as legal entities
· ICO organizers must provide information about all token holders
· Tokens can be issued only be by legal entities individual entrepreneurs
A new bill about cryptocurrency mining regulations was introduced on 20 of March 2018. It showed:
· Obligatory Identification and therefore anonymous transactions are prohibited.
· It’s not allowed to pay in cryptocurrency in shops. According to law it will be a special kind of “digital assets”
· ICO processes are described in details
· Mining was recognized as business activity. In fact it means that miners must pay taxes.
To sum up, this document still raises many questions and considered by the international community as a “rough draft”.
Russian association of cryptocurrency and blockchain (RACIB) is not agree with this document, and primarily with mining definition as a business activity.
“Mining, on its own, as a process of programing code, doesn’t make any economic sense until exchanging of these codes to real money”, — he said.
“Crypto industry — is a decentralized thing and cannot be regulated, what legislature wants it to be. They think, that it can be regulated by analogue with gas and oil. But this is a fallacy. We can create conditions for the development in a particular jurisdiction.” — explains Yuri Pripachkin, the president of RACIB.
Such kind of regulation is losing to legislation of Singapore, Switzerland, Estonia and Belarus, in which it’s said “about developing the industry and then about its regulation”, considers Pripachkin.
Transactions with cryptocurrencies are not prohibited, but by themselves such operations are considered as a sufficient reason for checking for any laundering of income obtained by criminal means or financing of terrorism.
