Putin: mining and circulation of cryptocurrency should be under state control

After the Central Bank of the Russian Federation was firmly in favor of regulating cryptocurrency and blocking external sites where citizens can buy bitcoins, the problem has reached the level of the president. On October 10, Vladimir Putin held a meeting with the participation of the Minister of Finance, Presidential Aide Andrei Belousov, Chairman of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina and her Deputy Olga Skorobogatova, as well as General Director of Qiwi company Sergey Solonin.



It was decided that "the issue and circulation of cryptocurrency in Russia should be under state control," reports the Federal News Agency.



The problems associated with cryptocurrency, Putin himself listed earlier: "First of all, this is the possibility of laundering of money obtained by criminal means, tax evasion and even financing of terrorism, and, of course, the spread of fraudulent schemes, of which ordinary citizens can certainly become victims" .



On the one hand, the Russian authorities support the mining of cryptocurrencies, promising to reduce the price of electricity for mining farms . On the other hand, they seek to limit the uncontrolled purchase of bitcoins by ordinary citizens in order to protect them from participation in the “financial pyramid”, as head of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation Elvira Nabiullina and other officials call Bitcoin.



The outcome of the meeting at Putin commented Finance Minister Anton Siluanov: “We agreed on the following - that the state should regulate the process of issuing cryptocurrency, mining, and the circulation process. The state should take all this under control. ”



At the meeting, Putin said that cryptocurrency is not secured and in the event of a bubble “inflating” no one will be held legally responsible. Therefore, they need to be regulated, but in such a way as not to “pile up extra barriers”.



In September, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov at a panel session, “Blockchain - the birth of a new economy,” said: “For the time being, we are not providing technological leadership to change the lives of people in Russia. Providing this leadership is the number one challenge today. The president is completely ill with this, realizing that the gap and significant growth rates are based on the digital economy and technological leadership. ”



Since the president "fell ill" with cryptocurrencies, no one dares to prohibit them, no matter how much the Central Bank advocates. It is simply planned to adopt new legislation, in which the handling of cryptocurrencies, the holding of ICOs and the issuance of other derivatives will be more tightly regulated.



It is possible that they will introduce an article into the Criminal Code for anonymous use of cryptocurrencies, a mandatory identification procedure for users, will restrict purchases only on licensed exchanges and exchange offices. But it is unlikely that any more stringent measures will be taken, so there is nothing to worry about yet.