Russian government to draft cryptocurrency-regulation scenarios by February 11.

By February 11, the Russian government will develop draft scenarios for regulating cryptocurrency markets, with assessments of their likely consequences. This, reports Kommersant, citing materials from the January 28 meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko.

According to the publication, the government leans toward the Finance Ministry’s position rather than the Central Bank. At the same time, the ministry itself still disagrees with the financial regulator on the possibility of ensuring the legality of crypto-asset turnover under state control.

In the Finance Ministry’s variant, the market would be split into a ‘white’, regulated portion and a criminalised ‘black’ segment; in the Central Bank’s variant, all cryptocurrency operations should take place outside the Russian Federation’s jurisdiction.

Contours of the regulatory concept for the crypto market, agreed with government agencies, are laid out in a February 2 letter from Finance Minister Anton Siluanov to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.

In the document, the volume of Russians’ cryptocurrency holdings is estimated at 2 trillion rubles (Bloomberg put the estimate at 16.5 trillion rubles). These assets could be legalized or retain their current status—neither directly violating the law nor supported by them.

The government’s consolidated position is that private cryptocurrencies will not be a legal means of payment in Russia, and mining should become subject to regulation.

According to government sources, legalising the business of overseas Bitcoin exchanges in Russia should yield around 180 billion rubles in corporate income tax per year. One of the Finance Ministry’s tasks is to safeguard cryptocurrencies legally purchased by Russians abroad.

As reported, the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry hold divergent positions on cryptocurrencies. The Central Bank proposes to ban their circulation and mining on Russian soil, while the ministry favors regulating the industry. The department has already drafted its own concept.

Last week Russia approved the government roadmap through the end of 2022, which provides for mandatory registration of crypto platforms in the country, as well as accountability for illegal turnover of digital assets and failure to declare information about transactions with them.

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