The President of the Russian Federation ordered the State Duma (the lower chamber of the country’s parliament) and the Government to settle cryptocurrencies. On February 27, 2019, Putin approved a list of instructions for the implementation of the President’s Address to the Federal Assembly of February 20, 2019, which was published on the Kremlin’s website. The document points out the need to enact laws on the digital economy, including those that should resolve “digital financial assets”. The responsible persons for this task are Dmitry Medvedev (the head of government) and Vyacheslav Volodin (the chairman of the State Duma).
But citizens of the Russian Federation should not rejoice prematurely. Back in 2017, the President of the Russian Federation ordered to prepare amendments to the legislation, which would have to regulate the issue of cryptocurrency. As you can see, this did not happen.
Against this [possibly] positive news, the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation clarified that online assets may also be the subject of crimes related to money laundering. Moreover, at the beginning of last year, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseyev called cryptocurrency a “money surrogate.”
