The Central Bank of the Russian Federation has released a report “Cryptocurrencies: Trends, risks, measures“. It proposes to prohibit both any operations with cryptocurrency and mining as such.
The report has 37 pages, but the main points are given in the summary at the very beginning. According to the document:
- the volume of transactions of Russian citizens with cryptocurrencies reaches $5 billion a year;
- Russian citizens are active users of Internet platforms that trade cryptocurrencies;
- Russia is among the leaders in terms of global mining capacity.
According to the bank’s representatives, the spread of cryptocurrencies poses significant threats to the well-being of Russian citizens and the stability of the financial system (due to the withdrawal of citizens’ savings outside the perimeter of the Russian financial sector, restrictions on the sovereignty of monetary policy and the active use of cryptocurrencies in illegal activities).
For this reason, they are calling for drastic measures against cryptocurrencies:
- establish responsibility for violating the legislative prohibition on the use of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment for goods, works and services sold and purchased by legal entities and individuals who are residents of the Russian Federation;
- introduce a ban on the issuance and circulation of cryptocurrencies on the territory of the Russian Federation and establish responsibility for violating this ban;
- introduce a ban on investments of financial organizations in cryptocurrencies and related financial instruments;
- introduce a ban on mining cryptocurrencies.
Simultaneously with the release of the document, it became known that the FSB convinced Elvira Nabiullina, the head of the Central Bank, to support a complete ban on transactions with cryptocurrencies in Russia. Bloomberg claims that by doing so, the Russian special services want to deprive the opposition and a number of media outlets of access to funding.
At the moment, Russian citizens and legal entities have the right to buy cryptocurrency on foreign markets, but it is prohibited to use it as a means of payment in Russia.