“digital assets payment ban” bill introduces in the Russian parliament

Russian legislators seek to bring a clear vision for the Russian crypto community that they don’t want to give room for crypto adoption at that level where crypto circulation possible.

Russia is a technology adoptive country but the stance of the Russian government toward crypto is not clear. On 1 January 2021, the Russian government introduced a crypto bill to allow the citizens to trade with crypto assets legally with the provisions to prohibit the use of cryptocurrencies in payment methods. But in late 2021, the Russian Central Bank proposed an idea to ban cryptocurrencies. 

In recent months, Russian legislators worked to bring possible ways to bring better laws and legislative ways to bring the use of crypto in the payment system for Russian international trade activities.

 After lots of work, on 7 June, the head of the Financial Markets Committee of the Russian parliament’s lower chamber, Anatoliy Aksakov, introduced a bill “digital financial actives” (DFA) to pay for any kind of goods or services” to bring clarity on the clear use of cryptocurrencies.

The Introduced bill took the reference to the existing crypto bill of Russia, which strictly prohibits the use of cryptocurrencies in the payment system. Which noted:

“The ruble is the official monetary unit (currency) of the Russian Federation. The aforementioned article sets a prohibition against the introduction of other monetary units or monetary surrogates on the territory of the Russian Federation.”

Under the Introduced bill, all the electronic payment platforms are required to register with the corresponding regulatory body to ensure their stand on the crypto-related activities and also to prohibit the payment services from being used in cryptocurrencies. 

However Russia vs Ukraine conflict resulted in huge numbers of reasons to bring cryptocurrencies into use to facilitate international trade-related payments. 

In the introduced 2021 crypto bill of Russia, there was only a provision not to use crypto in the payment system but there was no restriction or any kind of framework to prohibit the companies to not to using crypto in payment methods. So there are assumptions hat latest introduced bill is the remaining portion of the crypto bill 2021.

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