An official from the Russian Finance Ministry recently disclosed some new details about a bill that is currently being drafted for regulation of digital currencies in the country.
According to the official, local infrastructure may be included in the upcoming bill, which will give businesses the ability of negotiating the international use of crypto all on their own.
The details
The International Chamber of Commerce Russia hosted a roundtable on Monday in Moscow where the bill was discussed by Ivan Chebeskov, the head of the Financial Policy Department of the Finance Ministry.
He stated that the bill in question offers local infrastructure for regulation on crypto mining and for settlements, but also said that there will be numerous details that businesses would have to resolve on their own.
He said that it was not immediately clear as to how they should go about regulation, so they would provide businesses the opportunity of paying with crypto through this bill.
However, he added that entrepreneurs will decide what crypto to use, which countries to use it for and how to negotiate with counter-parties.
PM orders
Mikhail Mishutin, the Prime Minister of Russia, issued orders on September 13th for different stakeholders in Russia to come to an agreement about crypto regulation by December 19th.
He referred to the Federal Tax Service, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), the Finance Ministry, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Federal Financial Monitoring Service, known as Rosfinmonitoring.
The legislation would have to regulate the mining, issuance, circulation as well as the use of crypto for making international settlements.
However, it should be noted that the instructions of the prime minister were not applicable to the local use of crypto.
According to Chebeskov, the Central Bank of Russia and the Finance Ministry were launching new discussions on crypto regulation in accordance with that order.
He added that they already had several texts of the legislation and they were discussing crypto mining separately. He said that their ‘vision’ of mining were quite similar, as opposed to that of settlements.
The disagreement
The Russian central bank and the Finance Ministry have been on opposing sides when it comes to the place of crypto in the Russian Federation.
The former has been strongly opposed to the use of crypto in any way and they went as far as suggesting that a complete ban be imposed on it.
This is because the bank believes it could destabilize the Russian economy and ruin its financial system. But, their position has slowly eroded and this is in light of the Western sanctions imposed on Moscow.
The country’s invasion of Ukraine in February has resulted in sanctions that have cut off their access to the global financial system.
On September 5th, an announcement indicated that after a lengthy discussion, the Russian central bank may be ready to use crypto for international trade.
But, it is still not prepared to allow its use locally and is working on a digital ruble.
