Russian legislators are drafting revisions to the “On Digital Financial Assets” law to establish the legal foundation for a national cryptocurrency exchange.
The creation of a national cryptocurrency exchange is being worked on by Russian legislators. According to reports, the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of Russia, 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 changes 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 emphasized the budgetary responsibility of such measures:
“It makes no sense to deny the existence of cryptocurrencies, the problem is they circulate in a large stream outside of state regulation. These are billions of tax rubles of lost tax revenues to the federal budget.“
Anatoly Aksakov, the chair of the Duma’s Committee on Financial Market, said in June that Russia might establish a national cryptocurrency exchange as a member of the Moscow Exchange, a credible organization with an extensive history. 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 authorize cryptocurrency mining and selling the extracted coins was presented to the Duma earlier this month. The legislation would create a Russian marketplace for cryptocurrency sales, but local miners would also be permitted to use global marketplaces. The latter scenario would exempt transactions from Russian currency controls and rules, but they would still need to be reported to the Russian tax office.
