Russian entrepreneur Alexander Lebedev said that he is “less sympathetic toward Bitcoin” than the decentralised finance (DeFi) sector, and added that he is not interested in cryptocurrencies from a profitability standpoint. He said this during an online conference on cryptocurrency regulation in Russia.
“This [Bitcoin] is a tool for speculative operations that has not yet gained much practical use. I am more sympathetic toward DeFi,” he said.
Last year Lebedev announced the creation of a large-scale “anti-bankster” DeFi project. In December, a project named InDeFiEco launched and attracted more than $3.5 million in investments.
Lebedev added that interest in blockchain is driven by convenience and lower transaction costs.
“The point of cryptocurrencies was to connect us directly with one another, bypassing all government layers,” he concluded.
Yuri Pripachkin, head of the Russian Association of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain (RACIB), said during the conference that the development of a \”new digital economy\” is underway and noted that traditional banks and regulators should embrace it and try to adapt:
“The degree of the crackdown on cryptocurrencies as a market feature shows that central banks understand, fear, and do not know what to do with it. Because they truly cannot regulate it.”
In his view, Russian regulators adopt \”the ostrich with its head in the sand\” stance, and the Bank of Russia \”does nothing to understand these processes.\”
Pripachkin called the digital ruble a fiction. The head of RACIB said that in the presented indicative model of the digital ruble there is no understanding of economic processes.
Commenting on current Russian legislative initiatives concerning digital currencies, Mikhail Popov, founder of the fintech platform Talkbank, said that cryptocurrency should be recognised:
“The key problem with the current law is that we said A but did not say B. We have excellent mechanisms—dealing with dollars and euros. What are we afraid of? That someone will buy something with cryptocurrency? Why then do we sell dollars in banks?”
Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma committee on the financial markets, said during the discussion that he cannot imagine how authorities could limit Russian investors’ ability to acquire digital currencies through foreign platforms.
He reiterated that he considers cryptocurrencies “a bubble that will burst sooner or later.”
The law \”On Digital Financial Assets\” came into force on 1 January 2021.
In February, the State Duma, in the first reading, endorsed in principle the draft law on taxing cryptocurrency transactions. The head of the State Duma Committee on Legislation, Pavel Krasheninnikov, said that to introduce taxation of cryptocurrencies it is necessary to legalise deals with them.
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