Cryptocurrencies will be banned as a means of payment but will remain a tool for investment
The confrontation between the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank has reached the legislative level. The Office of Anton Siluanov submitted to the government its bill on the regulation of cryptocurrencies. It proposes to create a registry of crypto exchanges and test citizens for knowledge of the basic provisions of this market. But the Bank of Russia prepared its own draft law, where it proposed to introduce a complete ban on the circulation of cryptocurrency and even fines for violators of up to 1 million rubles.
The dispute between the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank on the crypto market has been going on for more than a month. Back in November last year, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Energy proposed to equate mining with entrepreneurship and regulate the procedure for paying taxes. However, even then the Bank of Russia was categorically against the appearance in the country of “money surrogates” used in the shadow economy and did not support the position of the government.
A new round of battles between departments unfolded in January, when the Central Bank openly stated in its report that it considers the only way out of the situation a complete ban on cryptocurrencies in Russia, and equates this market with a financial pyramid. After that, representatives of the Ministry of Finance were forced to urgently declare that they had a different opinion. During a press conference on February 11, the head of the Bank of Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, again recalled her tough position in the crypto market. And just a few days later, a corresponding bill appeared. But the Ministry of Finance did not waste time and prepared its own plan for solving the cryptocurrency problem, however, already with an eye on the position of the Central Bank. In particular, the agency proposes to ban the use of digital currencies as a means of payment on the territory of the Russian Federation. As part of the regulation, digital currencies are considered solely as an investment tool.
It is proposed to create a special register of operators who can deal with their turnover. Foreign crypto exchanges will have to register in Russia to obtain a license. For any operation with cryptocurrency, it will be necessary to pass identification, deposit, and withdrawal of cryptocurrency from the client to the operator, and vice versa will be possible only through banks using a bank account. Before buying cryptocurrency, citizens will have to undergo online testing, which will test their knowledge about the specifics and risks of these operations. Exchanges and exchangers will be required to maintain registers indicating the addresses – identifiers of each holder of digital currencies.
who can deal with them? Foreign crypto exchanges will have to register in Russia to obtain a license. For any operation with cryptocurrency, it will be necessary to pass identification, deposit, and withdrawal of cryptocurrency from the client to the operator, and vice versa will be possible only through banks using a bank account. Before buying cryptocurrency, citizens will have to undergo online testing, which will test their knowledge about the specifics and risks of these operations. Exchanges and exchangers will be required to maintain registers indicating the addresses – identifiers of each holder of digital currencies. who can deal with them?
Foreign crypto exchanges will have to register in Russia to obtain a license. For any operation with cryptocurrency, it will be necessary to pass identification, deposit, and withdrawal of cryptocurrency from the client to the operator, and vice versa will be possible only through banks using a bank account. Before buying cryptocurrency, citizens will have to undergo online testing, which will test their knowledge about the specifics and risks of these operations. Exchanges and exchangers will be required to maintain registers indicating the addresses – identifiers of each holder of digital currencies. deposit and withdrawal of cryptocurrency from the client to the operator and vice versa will be possible only through banks using a bank account.
Before buying cryptocurrency, citizens will have to undergo online testing, which will test their knowledge about the specifics and risks of these operations. Exchanges and exchangers will be required to maintain registers indicating the addresses – identifiers of each holder of digital currencies. deposit and withdrawal of cryptocurrency from the client to the operator and vice versa will be possible only through banks using a bank account. Before buying cryptocurrency, citizens will have to undergo online testing, which will test their knowledge about the specifics and risks of these operations. Exchanges and exchangers will be required to maintain registers indicating the addresses – identifiers of each holder of digital currencies.
The ongoing interdepartmental battles divided the experts into two camps. Some support the regulator, while others see more benefit in the approach of the Ministry of Finance. “I believe that the Ministry of Finance has taken the right step towards changes,” says Galina Savchenko, lecturer at the Department of Information Process Management at the RANEPA. – A complete ban on cryptocurrencies in the country can greatly affect those who have invested in mining farms for so long and learned how to make money on it. This may lead to an outflow of specialists in this field to other countries. I think that legalization, in this case, would be much more appropriate.”
It is curious that among the existing miners there is no unequivocal opinion about the initiatives of the Ministry of Finance.
“I don’t plan to pay tax, there are too many expenses besides it: VAT, electricity, the riskiness of investing in crypto assets,” says Evgeny R., a 20-year-old unemployed Muscovite, for whom mining has been the main source of income for several years. – Tomorrow my assets may burn out or, conversely, fly into the sky: at what rate should I pay tax if I do not withdraw cryptocurrency from my wallet and wait for it to grow? And in this case, how to deal with gamers who quietly mine after they have played? The law must also apply to them. In general, I think that it is necessary either to set a threshold for withdrawal without taxation or to completely forget this topic for the Ministry of Finance, like a bad dream.” If there is a situation like with foreign agents who cannot even appeal their status, then you should think about “going into the forest” or moving to another country,
Valery M. has been mining crypto for over a year. His mining farm has only recently paid for itself and has begun to generate a steady income. In a month, he gets about 25 thousand rubles of profit from it. At the same time, he is still working, and he created mining exclusively for passive income. His opinion is fundamentally different from the point of view of Eugene. “I assess the initiatives of the Ministry of Finance positively, in contrast to the same Central Bank, which proposed a complete ban on cryptocurrency,” the man said. “In the case of regulation, I think it is necessary to use different methods: it is worth giving more freedom to each group of people, and not just dividing them into qualified or unqualified, and thereby create different conditions for entire groups of investors.”
At the same time, there is also a third camp in the Russian mining world – skeptics. They are not satisfied with any of the proposed concepts. “The bill of the Ministry of Finance, for some misunderstanding, called “regulation”, in fact, destroys the entire crypto industry in Russia,” says Sergey Mendeleev, executive director of InDeFi Smart Bank. – Two main theses – about the need to conduct all crypto-transactions and limiting the investment threshold for unqualified investors in cryptocurrencies – make it impossible to continue working in the legal field. I personally do not intend to comply with these thoughtless demands. And I’m silent about the fact that many dollar millionaires in the crypt are not yet 18 years old, and it’s basically impossible for them to qualify.
Joy is experienced only by professional participants, who are already rubbing their hands in anticipation of an increase in the percentage for risk in transactions for crypto-fiat transactions.” Mendeleev sees no difference at all between the positions of the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance. At the same time, the Bank of Russia has “trump cards in its hands”: the regulator has been able to torpedo the development of infrastructure on the basis of the law on digital financial assets for more than a year, in exactly the same way it will interfere with the normalization of the circulation of the crypt even in the Ministry of Finance version of the law, the expert is sure.