Russia Starts Developing Mechanism for International Crypto Payments – By the end of 2022, the Russian government intends to control the issuance, circulation, and different operations with digital assets, including international crypto payments. The duty has been assigned to the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank of Russia, and the Rosfinmonitoring agency, according to the daily Izvestia.
“The activities of organizations that will carry out exchange operations with digital currency, its transfer and storage, and providers of virtual asset services should be subject to regulation, including registration or licensing of such persons and their supervision,” Rosfinmonitoring explained and added that their responsibilities should also include combating money laundering.
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The current version of the bill “On Digital Currency,” proposed by the finance ministry earlier this year and changed with input from other authorities, provides for the construction of a domestic infrastructure for the trading of crypto assets. Now, Russian officials are focusing on the settlement method for cryptocurrency payments in world trade.
This week, Deputy Minister of Finance Alexey Moiseev announced that his department and the Bank of Russia have reached an agreement in principle on new legislation permitting foreign cryptocurrency transfers.
In early September, the two institutions reached the conclusion that Russia “cannot do without cross-border crypto payments” in the face of intensifying sanctions. The government official was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency and the business daily Kommersant: “Now we have a bill already agreed with the central bank. It generally describes how to acquire cryptocurrency, what can be done with it, and how it can or cannot be used, in the first place in cross-border settlements.”
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Moiseev acknowledged, according to a report by RBC Crypto, that the issue of “entry and exit to fiat” remains unresolved. Then, experts will need to evaluate the minimum infrastructure requirements for Russia to implement such cryptocurrency payments.
The finance ministry and monetary authority have also agreed on a draft bill that will legally define cryptocurrency mining. The deputy minister highlighted that the issue of whether miners should credit newly generated digital currency to wallets in the Russian Federation or overseas has been resolved in favor of the second option.
