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Russian President Vladimir Putin signs cryptocurrency bill into law

Russia's new cryptocurrency law will take into effect starting January 1, 2021.

Image by: Global Panorama / Flickr

Mon, 03 Aug 2020, 06:30 am UTC

The days of regulatory uncertainty for Russia’s cryptocurrency industry will soon be over. Russian President Vladimir Putin just signed into law that will legalize digital currencies in the country, properly define them, and regulate their use.

On Friday, July 31, President Putin signed into law a bill that will regulate digital financial asset (DFA) transactions, according to Bitcoin.com. The law will give legal status to cryptocurrency as a type of property but will not allow its use as a means of payment.

The new law states that digital currency “is recognized as an aggregate of electronic data capable of being accepted as the payment means, not being the monetary unit of the Russian Federation or a foreign state, and as investments,” as reported by the local news agency TASS. The publication added that “digital currency cannot be used at the same time to pay for any goods and services.”

While cryptocurrency can’t be used as payment, it can be purchased, sold, pledged, and exchanged. The new law states that digital financial assets “are digital rights comprising money claims, ability to exercise rights under negotiable securities, rights to participate in equity of a non-public stock company and right to claim transfer of negotiable securities set in a resolution on the DFA issue.”

Banks and crypto exchanges need to be registered with the Russian central bank if they want to act as exchange operations of digital currencies. “The central bank is vested with the authority to maintain the register of information systems and the register of operators of digital financial assets exchange and supervise the business of information system operators,” TASS noted.

However, the current law did not include some of the commonly used cryptocurrency-related terms such as “mining” and “token.” However, the head of the State Duma Committee on Financial Market Anatoly Aksakov revealed that a more detailed crypto regulation will be tackled in another bill.

The bill on digital financial assets transactions was already approved by the State Duma on July 22, FinanceMagnates reported. The new law will take effect on January 1, 2021.

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