Russia is a country that has been in the global spotlight for some time now. Over the years it’s been because of their political and economic spats with America. The last three years though, have seen Russia become the household topic of discussion because of their alleged involvement in swinging the 2016 US presidential elections through online hacks.
Russia was also quite the topic of discussion mid last year being the host of the world’s largest global sports bonanza; The FIFA World cup.
Russia has also been on the news for delving deep into the crypto-currency conversation in their efforts to shake off economic restrictions placed on them by the US. The crypto discourse in the country saw fresh developments as Russian president Vladimir Putin issued another deadline for the government to adopt regulations for the digital assets industry.
This directive was issued through a document on the president of Russia’s official website; Kremlin.ru, on Feb 27. According to the document, President Putin has ordered the government to enforce crypto related regulation by July 2019.
The president has required the Council of the federation of Russia and the Russian state Duma, which is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, to adopt the regulation during spring session of 2019. The document specifically aims at developing the digital economy which will include regulation of civil-law digital settlements. The legislation will also be required to include a regulatory framework for digital financial assets, while attracting greater financial resources based on digital technologies.
This directive by Russian president Vladimir putin echoes his previous statement last year, when he issued an order for the setting up of regulations for the Trade of Bitcoin (BTC), Altcoins, initial coin offerings (ICOs) and crypto mining by July 2018.
The Russian parliament passed crypto regulation in its first reading in May last year; however in autumn, all crypto and token related terms had been eventually replaced with the term “digital rights”, with the definition of crypto mining also being cut out from the bill. This saw the bill being sent back to the first reading stage in December 2018.
Just recently, the Russian financial outlet, Rambler reported that the Russian state Duma had plans to review and adopt new crypto regulations next month. Previously the country’s minister of justice had argued that the ministry did not see the need to legally define the crypto concept, since cryptos cannot be used as a payment method in the country.
The government’s language relating to crypto seems to be changing though with 2019 looking like the year cryptos will break into the Russia’s main-stream.
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