The State Duma may adopt a law banning Bitcoin and fining violators

Earlier, the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance have already said that the use of cryptocurrency (or rather, "money substitutes") in the Russian Federation is not recommended. No one has officially banned the use of Bitcoin, but soon such a ban may appear.

So, a group of deputies is currently developing a bill to completely ban the use of cryptocurrency in Russia. In this case, violators are planned to be fined up to the sum of up to 1 million rubles. “Cryptocurrencies threaten Russia's financial stability and financial sovereignty. There is already enough uncertainty on the stock exchange, and it is not necessary that, taking advantage of this situation, people would try to save money in Bitcoin, and then turn into deceived depositors. We have developed our own bill on introducing responsibility for the use of cryptocurrency, and one of these days it will be officially submitted to the State Duma, ”commented one of its developers, State Duma deputy (Fair Russia) Andrei Krutov.
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At the Central Bank, right now, the issue of using Bitcoin is not commented on, but the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank, Georgy Luntovsky, believes that cryptocurrency may be the future. “We are supporters of a careful approach to Bitcoin. You can’t reject this tool, perhaps the future belongs to it,” said Luntovsky in July at the International Banking Congress in St. Petersburg.

The amount of fines that are supposed to be introduced for the use of cryptocurrency in Russia is different for individuals, officials and legal entities. For individuals, the size of the fine is supposed to enter in the amount of from 5 to 20 thousand rubles. For officials - from 20 to 100 thousand rubles, and for legal entities - from 500 thousand to 1 million rubles. The same penalties can be introduced for cryptocurrency software developers and distributors for “information that allows for the issuance of cash surrogates or transactions with them” (whatever that means).

In Russia, so far only one company has been punished for working with cryptocurrency, although this company, the Novgorod KillFish Bar, is accused not so much of working with Bitcoin as of not using cash registers when accepting a payment in Bitcoins.

The Prosecutor General’s Office has already conducted a number of checks on the use of cryptocurrencies, and informed the president that it is dangerous to use money surrogates in the country (“they (cryptocurrencies - ed.) Are not provided with real value and their price is determined exclusively by speculative actions”).

Soon the bill will go to the State Duma for consideration.

Meanwhile, lawyers believe that to prove the fact of an offense and punish for working with Bitcoin by law will not be so easy. “To do this, you need to have good technical equipment and good professionals in order to calculate the facts of using cryptocurrencies and quickly respond to them. In addition, it will be extremely difficult to prove that a particular person released or used a cryptocurrency, because third parties could use his computer, ”Anton Sonichev, a lawyer of Delovoy Fairway, commented on the situation.

In the meantime, Microsoft began accepting payment in Bitcoin . While this option is relevant only for the United States.