Russian Ministry of Finance recently agreed on a bill proposing the use of cryptocurrency for cross-border payments and Central Bank of Russia has no other alternatives than to accept it. These developments seems to be a reversal of the government’s negative approach toward crypto.
Despite the Central Bank of Russia’s tough stance against cryptocurrencies, recent reports indicate that the tide may be shifting under Vladimir Putin’s administration, earlier in April this year.
Countries are moving toward fast-tracking cryptocurrency regulations, which is viewed as a step in the right direction for a country that controls the third-largest hash rate of the global bitcoin network.
Russia’s deputy prime minister Aleksey Moiseev, stated that the Russian central bank reportedly agreed to the proposal. The government official said:
“Now we have a bill in this part already agreed with the Central Bank on the whole … It generally describes how to acquire cryptocurrency, what can be done with it, and how it can or cannot be settled with it in the first place in cross-border settlements.”
The official stated that the proposal was looking to enable Russians to easily access crypto wallets, adding that citizens could open crypto wallets in Russia using institutions under the central bank’s supervision.
“Now people are opening crypto wallets outside the Russian Federation. It is necessary that this can be done in Russia, that this is done by entities supervised by the Central Bank, which are required to comply with the requirements of anti-money laundering legislation, and first of all, of course, to know their client.”
Ivan Chebeskov (Director of the Department of Financial Policy) at the Ministry of Finance argued that it was better to provide a robust crypto regulatory framework, than proposing a complete ban on digital assets. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also opposed the ban, stating that such a move could have negative effects to the Russian econoy.
