The Russian parliament's lower house passed a law that would allow transactions with digital financial assets (DFAs) from 2021, but would ban cryptocurrencies as a means of payment in Russia
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd July, 2020) The Russian parliament's lower house passed a law that would allow transactions with digital financial assets (DFAs) from 2021, but would ban cryptocurrencies as a means of payment in Russia.
DFAs are understood as digital rights, the issue, accounting and circulation of which is possible only by making entries in the information system based on a distributed registry. They can be an object of pledge, purchase and sale transactions, exchange of one type of digital asset for another (including those issued according to the rules of foreign information systems) or for digital rights of other types. At the same time, DFAs are not recognized as a means of payment.
Russian banks and exchanges will be able to become operators of the exchange of digital financial assets with the right to conduct sale and purchase transactions and exchange of such assets, and for this they must be included in a special register of the country's central bank. The Bank of Russia will have the right to determine the signs of DFAs, which only qualified investors can acquire, as well as, within a certain amount, unqualified individual investors.
A digital currency is defined as a set of electronic data (digital code or designation) contained in the information system, which are offered and (or) can be accepted as a means of payment which is not Russian, foreign and (or) international monetary or settlement unit. The circulation of cryptocurrencies will be limited.
The legislative authority defines cryptocurrency as a means of payment and as a means of savings and investment, but this means of payment is prohibited to be used to pay for goods and services in Russia, Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market, earlier explained to Sputnik.
At the same time, within the framework of the second reading, a number of definitions were excluded from the law, including "token" and "mining." According to Aksakov, it is planned to define more detailed regulation of digital currencies in another law, which may be passed in the fall.
