​Ethereum Foundation’s adviser calls the laws on the regulation of cryptocurrencies in Russia unworkable

What’s new? Entrepreneur and Ethereum Foundation’s adviser Vladislav Martynov told Bits.Media at the Balance crypto forum that the amendments to the legislation on digital assets recently proposed in Russia will not work. He believes that such changes are not designed to encourage innovation. According to Martynov, there is a high probability that the law banning the wide circulation of cryptocurrencies will be adopted, and the authorities intend to legalize only mining. Thus, the use of cryptocurrencies in the legal field will be allowed only for payments of export-import operations, but not within the country, he explained.

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What else did Martynov say? The businessman allowed the possibility of the creation of several fully state-controlled cryptocurrency exchanges, stressing that in the end, it is not so important because the laws do not work.

Martynov mentioned platforms for issuing digital financial assets (DFAs), noting that their creators are also users, so there is no mass implementation of the technology in Russia. He noted that in the two years of existence of these platforms, only a few state corporations became their clients. “In the end, the law on digital assets does not work even at the lower threshold, not to mention the original goal of stimulating the development of the innovation industry,” the entrepreneur reasons.

Martynov stated that the purpose of the amendments is to collect taxes. Speaking about the mining of cryptocurrencies in the country, he wondered how miners would exchange the mined assets for rubles. According to Martynov, one centralized state-regulated trading platform will be created for this purpose, where miners will pay taxes on conversions, the businessman concluded.

Earlier, the Bank of Russia conceptually supported the project on mining, submitted to the State Duma, but proposed to introduce a number of restrictions on the rules for the sale of mined cryptocurrency. Thus, miners could be allowed to sell only using foreign information infrastructure and only to non-residents of the Russian Federation.

This proposal of the regulator was opposed by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. According to Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev, the implementation of these measures would actually mean total licensing and a ban on mining outside the experimental legal regime.