The financial authorities are divided on the regulation of cryptography, the Central Bank putting pressure for a prohibition and the Ministry of Finance given the limited access to the best investors.
The governor of the Russian central bank, Elvira Nabiullina, once again urged the government to enforce a national cryptocurrency ban, preventing residents from negotiating digital assets in the country.
Speaking during a press conference, she proposed to ban the colonies of cryptography outside the experimental legal regime (ELR), a regulatory sand container controlled by the bank.
The ELR currently allows selected companies to use cryptocurrencies for transactions and provides a controlled framework so that minors can sell their assets internationally.
While the bank suggested that qualified investors could negotiate in the sandbox, Nabiullina remains strongly opposed to a wider use of cryptography. She reiterated calls for strict regulations, including criminal sanctions for violations, in order to guarantee that the crypto remains excluded from the consumer economy.
Despite its firm position, other Russian financial authorities seem more open to digital assets. The Ministry of Finance recently proposed a category of “super-qualified” investors who could legally exchange the crypto.
Industry leaders, including Alexander Shokhin of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, argue that Russia should reconsider its position, in particular in the light of global developments such as the United States accumulating Bitcoin and Ethereum reserves.
Nabiullina, however, remains firm, rejecting any possibility of integrating the crypto into the reserves of the central bank. While the debate on digital assets continues in Moscow, the central bank remains determined to protect retail investors from a very risky market.
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