PRESS: Russia working on bill on cryptocurrency trade, exchanges

MOSCOW, Apr 12 (PRIME) -- A working group at Russia’s State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, is drafting a bill to legalize cryptocurrencies and lay the legal groundwork for exchange trading in them, the Izvestiya daily reported on Wednesday, quoting the group’s head Elina Sidorenko.

The central bank, the finance and economic ministries, the financial monitoring services and law enforcement entities have no doubt about the necessity of cryptocurrencies in the country, Sidorenko said.

“At the moment, the central bank and interested authorities are working out a common position on the status of cryptocurrencies…Approaches to their regulation will be determined, and other issues will be studied later,” she said.

The government earlier wanted to ban cryptocurrencies, but now it thinks the industry should develop.

“We should support those who work with cryptocurrencies, make this kind of activity simple. At that we should ensure security on exchange floors…It’s important to prevent laundering of illegal incomes and pumping money abroad. We are thinking of conditions allowing cryptocurrency exchanges to prosper in Russia,” Sidorenko said.

There are several ways of buying cryptocurrencies: in specialized online exchange offices and online bourses, which already work in the U.S. and Japan.

“Today, we, as a country, are unattractive for creation of cryptocurrency exchanges…But we want to inspire people to come to us,” Sidorenko said.

The most widespread cryptocurrencies are bitcoin, dash, ethereum and monero. They all trade on various exchange floors and have different rates to the U.S. dollar.

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