White, black, and gray areas – At the end of January 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin asks politicians and central bankers to agree on cryptocurrencies. He then defends the mining of bitcoin (BTC) given the economic stakes, thus rejecting the call of the Russian central bank to ban cryptocurrencies – sale, exchange, mining. The leaders of the country’s various institutions did not wait long to issue proposals on regulations governing, but not prohibiting, bitcoin mining.
Letter to the Russian Prime Minister: advocacy for bitcoin
According to an article of February 3, 2022 in the media Kommersant, the Russian Minister of Finance, Anton Siluanov, sent the day before, a letter to the Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin where he reiterates the will of his ministry to to regulate and not to prohibit cryptocurrency trading and mining in Russia.
The new regulations would give investment asset status to cryptocurrencies. The regulations governing transactions in fiduciary currencies and those with exchange instruments would then also apply to bitcoin and its cadets.
Traders and crypto investors will have to comply with the obligations in terms of know-your-customer (KYC) procedures. Crypto businesses will have to comply with anti-money laundering provisions.
Transactions in cryptocurrencies carried out outside this regulatory framework would incur the administrative and criminal responsibilities of the actors concerned.
The Russian Minister of Finance even proposed to grant a license to certain Russian banks. The latter could thus fulfill the role of bitcoin exchange, facilitating the sale, the exchange operations of the latter.
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When bitcoin has more than one friend in the Russian political sphere
The Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry also wants to move the lines in favor of bitcoin. The director of the institution, Sergey Katyrin, has sent a letter to the Minister of Finance in which he urges the latter to take bitcoin mining out of the “grey zone” where the activity is currently located.
The letter highlights the need for significant revisions to current legislation. New regulations will give bitcoin mining business activity status which will then make it possible to guarantee “the payment of taxes and other compulsory payments”.
The letter further states that such regulations “will help defuse tensions over issues of illegal electricity use.”
The Ministry of Finance had already disavowed the Russian central bank after the latter expressed its desire to ban cryptocurrencies in the country. It therefore confirms through this letter from the minister its position in favor of bitcoin to the chagrin of the central bank which ardently defends traditional finance.
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