According to Anton Tkachev, average users are prevented from trading.
The internal circulation of cryptocurrencies will soon be “completely banned” in Russia, said Anton Tkachev, deputy head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, in an interview with the Parlamentskaya Gazeta news agency this week.
Although cryptocurrencies are legal in Russia, their use is limited and insufficiently regulated, which the authorities are already working to change, according to the representative.
Tkachev explained that according to the planned amendments to crypto laws, average Russian users will not be able to use cryptocurrencies to make purchases within the country. He did not specify when those changes might take effect.
Russian businesses, on the other hand, should be allowed to conduct crypto transactions, Tkachev said, especially amid Western sanctions on Ukraine that have effectively cut off Russia from the Western financial system. He noted that the country’s central bank and the Ministry of Industry and Trade have already developed a tool to handle cross-border payments. The system is currently being tested and is expected to be rolled out within a few months.
“Once the testing is completed, the government will officially be able to conduct transactions in cryptocurrency,” he said, noting that Russian businesses will be able to choose whether to pay their foreign partners in cryptocurrency or digital rubles.
“The digital ruble is currently only used within the country, so far there have been no cross-border transactions… However, the digital ruble allows transactions to be carried out without intermediary financial organizations”, thereby solving the problem of international settlements amid sanctions, he explained.
“Companies trading with cryptocurrencies are not exposed to the pressure of sanctions because it becomes much more difficult to track payments,” Tkachev said.
