After Moscow rejected the central bank's advice to ban Bitcoin and Crypto altogether, the government has now released a detailed publication on regulating Cryptocurrencies.
I don't know where this leaves privacy coins like XMR and fully decentralized platforms like Uniswap, but let's summarize the most important criteria we do know:
- Cryptocurrencies will be integrated into the current Russian financial system
- To protect the rights and interests of investors traders will be categorized as "qualified" and "unskilled"
- Traders will all be required by law to identify themselves
- The trade of fiat money to Crypto will only be allowed through "organizers of the systems of digital exchange" (banks that are specialized in tracking Crypto, verifying customers' ID, store data etc.)
- Data regarding Crypto transactions will be stored for a minimum of 5 years
- Foreign Crypto exchanges are allowed to operate in Russia only if they are licensed in the country they are registered in and also have a representative office in Russia. This does not apply to exchanges registered in so called "tax havens"
- All Crytpo transactions above 600.000 Rubles (7000 Euro) must be reported to government tax services
It also said that Russia ranks 3rd globally in terms of mining Crypto and that Russians have in total 12 million cryptocurrency wallets holding about 2 trillion Rubles in value (almost 24 billion Euro). Not sure if this is making a distinction between people's exchange account addresses and actual wallet addresses, but there you go.
Some translated details can be found here, the entire publication can be found here.
