#Russia

Moscow court ordered Telegram messenger app to be blocked in Russia after failing to give the country’s Secret Service (FSB) decryption keys to access users’ messages. Telegram argues this would violate users’ privacy and that the codes constantly change.

Russia’s Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications (MinComSvyaz) has prepared guidelines for Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). The document, however, has already become target for heavy criticism.

Russia’s parliament members Anatoly Aksakov, Igor Divinski, and Oleg Nikolaev, as well as senator Nikolai Zhuravlev have presented a bill on digital financial assets that defines cryptocurrencies and tokens as property while banning their usage as means of payment.

While dramatic price swings of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are rattling the nerves of investors, a Moscow-based company has launched a hotline to help ease their anxiety over crypto market fluctuations.

Russian security officers have arrested several scientists working at a top-secret Russian nuclear warhead facility for allegedly mining crypto-currencies.

Russia’s ministry of finance is proposing to create special offshore cryptocurrency trading platforms with cities of Vladivostok and Kaliningrad considered as possible locations, deputy minister Alexei Moiseev said Friday.

Russia’s ministry of finance has published a bill on digital assets regulation, which, among other things, defines cryptocurrencies, tokens, mining, and ICO’s.

According to Arseni Scheltsin, the director of Russia’s Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Association, the proposals on creating and regulating a national cryptocurrency will be officially presented in July 2018, while a full-fledge launch would take a year after that.