Bank of Russia against Bitcoin's “money surrogate”

Tonight, the Bank of Russia issued a press release in which it warned all of us against using Bitcoin and other virtual currencies:



“The Bank of Russia notes that recently the so-called“ virtual currencies ”, in particular, Bitcoin, have gained some acceptance in the world. For “virtual currencies” there is no provision and legally obliged subjects for them. Operations on them are speculative in nature, carried out on the so-called "virtual exchanges" and carry a high risk of losing value.

The Bank of Russia warns citizens and legal entities, primarily credit organizations and non-credit financial institutions, against using “virtual currencies” to exchange them for goods (works, services) or for money in rubles and in foreign currency. „



The Bank of Russia also threatened with the law:

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“According to article 27 of the Federal Law“ On the Central Bank of the Russian Federation (Bank of Russia) ”, the issue of money substitutes in the territory of the Russian Federation is prohibited.

Due to the anonymous nature of the activity of issuing “virtual currencies” by an unlimited number of subjects and using them to perform operations, citizens and legal entities may be, inadvertently, involved in illegal activities, including legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime, and the financing of terrorism.

The Bank of Russia warns that the provision of services by the Russian legal entities for the exchange of “virtual currencies” for rubles and foreign currency, as well as for goods (works, services) will be considered as a potential involvement in carrying out suspicious operations in accordance with the legislation on counteracting legalization (laundering) criminal proceeds and the financing of terrorism. "



Naturally, this was done in the trend of preparing for consideration in 1 reading a block of so-called “anti-terrorism” bills , one of which is just a legislative act on restricting Internet payments .

And as a possible announcement of some new bills, there are relatively little or not controlled by our Central Bank virtual currencies and their aggregators.



At the same time, a number of influential people (for example, German Gref ) expressed doubts about the effectiveness of restricting online trading and payments, and some countries even officially recognize cryptocurrency seeing its prospects and potential for a new leap in the economy, but apparently, the pendulum has swung to the side from U.S.