To start a national cryptocurrency exchange, Russian legislators are drafting amendments. According to reports, the Central Bank of Russia and the Ministry of Finance, which have a long history of conflict over the country’s regulation of cryptocurrencies, both support this initiative.
The Duma, the lower house of the Russian government, has been in talks with market participants about amendments to the country’s current cryptocurrency legislation “On digital financial assets,” according to local media reports from Nov. 23. The central bank will first get a presentation of the revisions, which would establish the legal foundation for a national exchange.
Member of the Duma’s Committee on Economic Policy Sergey Altuhov emphasised the fiscal sensibility of such measures:
“It is absurd to claim that cryptocurrencies do not exist; the issue is that they are widely traded without any state regulation. For the federal budget, this represent billions of tax rubles in lost tax revenues.
Anatoly Aksakov, the chair of the Duma’s Committee on Financial Market, said in June that Russia may establish a national cryptocurrency exchange as a part of the Moscow Exchange, “a credible organisation with long traditions.” On behalf of the central bank, the Moscow Exchange produced a law in September to permit trading in digital financial assets.
A bill that would authorise cryptocurrency mining and the selling of the extracted coins was presented to the Duma earlier this month. The legislation would create a Russian platform for cryptocurrency sales, but local miners would also be permitted to use global platforms. The latter scenario would exempt transactions from Russian currency controls and rules, but they would still need to be reported to the Russian tax service.
