Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Friday banning the use of cryptocurrencies to pay for goods and services.
Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a law on Friday banning the use of digital assets as a form of payment in Russia.
According to reports, the legislation will prohibit the transfer or acceptance of "digital financial assets as consideration for the transfer of goods, performance of works, provision of services, and in any other way allowing people to undertake payment for goods (works, services) through digital financial assets, unless the federal The law states otherwise", effectively prohibiting the use of cryptocurrencies or NFT as a form of payment.
The bill was submitted to the State Duma in June by Anatoly Aksakov, head of the legislature’s Financial Markets Committee, and signed into law by Putin on Friday. The new law also includes a provision requiring cryptocurrency exchanges and vendors to refuse transactions in which digital assets might be understood as a form of payment.
The Russian government has seen internal conflict over cryptocurrency regulation, with agencies divided over whether to outright ban cryptocurrencies or simply regulate them. Russia’s central bank had called for a ban on cryptocurrencies in January this year, a move the finance ministry opposed, saying instead that “regulation is sufficient to protect our citizens.”
The new law will take effect in 10 days.
There has been some speculation that sanctioned Russian companies or individuals may use cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions imposed after the country hacked Ukraine . But officials have proven themselves savvy in using on-chain analytics to track transactions, and industry experts warn that people who try to use cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions will be harmed. The US and EU agencies even added specific cryptocurrency wallet addresses to the sanctions list.
