Following an announcement that the Russian government will control the issuance and circulation of cryptocurrencies in the country, the Kremlin rolled out a handful of new orders related to the oversight of digital monies and financial transactions. Among the pending requirements are mandatory registration for cryptocurrency miners and, similar to the US government, extending the authority of federal securities laws to initial coin offerings (ICOs). Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the five orders, according to the website of the country’s government, which published them Oct. 21.
Based on translations provided by the website, the first order states that the government and the central bank of Russia shall revise the necessary legislation to determine the status of “digital technologies used in the financial sphere and their concepts,” in the context of the ruble as the only legal tender in the Russian Federation. This is to include distributed registry technology, digital letters of credit, digital mortgages, cryptocurrencies, tokens, and “smart contracts.”
According to the second order, the government and the central bank will cooperate on establishing the regulatory requirements for the production, or “mining,” of digital currencies and related distributed registries, “including the registration of economic entities carrying out such activities, and determining the procedure for its taxation.” The third order involves placing ICO tokens within the sphere of the federal securities laws and regulations.
According to the fourth order, the Russian government and the central bank will submit proposals on creating a special regulatory platform, or “sandbox,” for approving “innovative financial technologies, products and services” and for regulating their application in the financial market. The fifth order indicates the Russian authorities will work on “a single payment space for the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union with the use of new financial technologies, including the technology of distributed registries.”