#Russia

Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russian Investigative Committee, promises to make cryptocurrency operations criminally punishable. He stated that in his interview to Russian government publication Rossiyskaya Gazeta, speaking about his agency’s combat with corruption, terrorism, cryptocurrency, and Ponzi schemes. “It is necessary to fight against varuous soap bubbles on financial market, namely finanical tools not backed […]

Russian Ministry of Finance has finalized its own draft law concerning the ban of so-called ‘money surrogates’. It intends to submit it to the government’s reviewing. The ministry proceeded with development of the draft law as eary as August 2014. However, the document received numerous criticisms and was revised several times. The ministry justifies its […]

Members of Russian legislative assembly, the State Duma, may review a new draft edition of the Administrative Violations Code in the first reading as early as this February. The draft law implies de-facto legalization of operations with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The legislative initiative has been submitted to the State Duma in late 2015. Previously […]

The year 2015 was marked as the year of expanding obscurantism and controversies around several internet-related issues in Russia. According to one of relatively new Russian laws, the state supervising agency Roskomnadzor has the right to restrict or prohibit access to any website at its own discretion and without any court rulings. The agency was […]

Speaking at conference Feedback on December 23, Grigori Bakunov, technology distribution executive at Yandex, introduced several possible major technological trends for the forthcoming years. Among other things, they include the blockchain technology, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence. Explaining his views on smart objects and bitcoin, Bakunov said: “Thank god, people realized bitcoin was […]

Pavel Cherkashin, an angel investor and a partner at Vestor.In Partners, wrote an article for Russia’s most popular business newspaper Vedomosti. There he describes cryptocurrency in general and points out lots of its advantages as compared to the traditional banking system. Cherkashin stated that, according to expert opinions, at least 10% of the global GDP […]

Russian Internet Development Institute (IDI) offered the president Vladimir Putin a roadmap regulating implementation of blockchain technology. Moreover, the roadmap includes proposals as to crowd-funding and crowd-investment, facilitate taxation of freelancers, and withdraw limitations on anonymous payments for tax and loan purposes.

According to Russian minister for communications, Nikolay Nikiforov, options of using bitcoin’s underlying technology of blockchain to the benefit of the state should be scrutinized. He told that on the sidelines of “Internet Economy” forum on December 21.