Legislation making it illegal to pay with cryptocurrencies has been filed with the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament. The sponsors of the bill want to task crypto platforms to prevent transactions that could facilitate payments with digital assets.
Russian lawmakers will review a new bill imposing a ban on the use of digital financial assets, a legal term currently encompassing cryptocurrencies, and utilitarian digital rights, or tokens, as a means of payment in Russia. The document has been submitted to the State Duma by the Chairman of the Financial Market Committee Anatoly Aksakov, the crypto news outlet Forklog reported.
The authors of the bill also emphasize that the Russian ruble is the only legal tender in the country. In an explanatory note, they insist the ban will eliminate the risk of employing digital assets as ‘monetary surrogates.’ They plan to oblige the issuers of coins and tokens as well as the operators of exchange and investment platforms to refuse to process transactions related to crypto payments.
The authorities in Moscow are now working to adopt comprehensive rules for the country’s crypto space. Currently, the market is only partially regulated by the law “On Digital Financial Assets,” which was approved in 2020 and went into force in January, last year.
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