On Monday (July 1), Russia’s Deputy Finance Minister, Alexey Moiseev, said that his country would not be introducing separate new regulations to deal with Facebook’s upcoming cryptocurrency Libra, which was unveiled on June 18, and which is expected to launch in 2020.

According to a report by Russian news agency Interfax, Moiseev told journalists that Libra would be treated like any other cryptocurrency:

No one is going to ban it.

He explained that Russia will treat cryptocurrencies in a similar way to how it treats foreign fiat currencies, i.e. legal to buy them, sell them, and hold them, but not to use them to pay for goods and services:

The ruble is our national currency, and all calculations must be made in it.

Per a report published by Russian news agency Tass on June 18, the Deputy Finance Minister expects the bill on Digital Financial Assets (DFA) to be adopted by Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, in the second reading, “within two weeks.”

On the same day, news agency RNS reported that Moiseev had this to say about the the DFA bill:

We had a meeting last week, Anton Germanovich (Siluanov, First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance. – RNS) held it, and Vice-Premier Akimov, the Central Bank, we, law enforcement agencies attended. In general, we have agreed, now the final text, everyone is watching it … All decisions have been made there, now we are looking at the text, and within two weeks, I hope, we will come out for adoption in the second reading.

Per the RNS report, Moiseev “noted that the issue of taxation of activities involving cryptocurrency was not discussed at the meeting, but added that this is ‘ordinary human activity, it should be regulated like everything else’.”

On June 21, Interfax reported that the DFA bill was adopted by the State Duma in the first reading on 22 May 2018, and that the head of the Duma Financial Market Committee, Anataoly Aksakov, had said that “according to FATF recommendations, Russia should adopt a bill on the circulation of cryptocurrency before the end of 2019.”

In today’s press conference, Moiseev also commented on initial coin offerings (ICOs):

A large number of businesses ask when it will finally be possible to legally conduct an ICO transparently, this will definitely be regulated, permitted, and that’s all.

According to the Tass report (from June 18), ICOs will be dealt with by a separate bill on crowdfunding (“On alternative ways of attracting investment”).

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