Russia Set to Prohibit Cryptocurrencies

So, it looks like Russia is gearing up to ban cryptocurrencies. The central bank there has put forth a proposal to outlaw the use and mining of cryptos within the country. Given that Russia is actually the third-largest player in the bitcoin mining game, this is pretty significant. They did legalize cryptos back in 2020, but they’ve already banned using them as payment. The Bank of Russia pointed out that crypto mining is causing energy consumption issues since the country is one of the top crypto miners globally. On top of that, they’re planning to introduce their own digital currency, the digital rouble. This ban would even extend to crypto exchanges. With the crypto market facing a downturn right now, it’s gonna be interesting to see how this potential ban affects the whole crypto scene.

Russia will not ban, but rather will gently regulate this area. In Russia, they decided to act wisely - to collect taxes from the "sellers" of cryptocurrencies as from entrepreneurs. And I think if all this is legally worked out well within 1-2 years, then this, based on the excess generation of electricity in certain regions, this can be an excellent opportunity to develop new jobs and so on.

I think Russia banning cryptocurrencies is quite a lot different from China attempting to ban them (even if Russia had the 70% China was estimated to). Russia have very strong transport links to Europe so if a ban goes through, a lot of miners could offload to other places there (or mine if the country's electricity is cheap enough).

The ban was proposed by the central bank, while the president are supporting cryptocurrencies... I don't think central bank has a more power than the president, so cryptocurrencies wouldn't be banned in Russia. Actually with this news, the central bank want to create panic in the market since Russian is the one or largest mining Bitcoin. But seems their plan aren't really working, the market still in recovery phase and not fall.

Could this be the reason (or one of the reasons) the US and EU dropped the idea of banning Russia from using Swift? I quote: Russia is loaded in oil and gas, if they can't receive euros and dollars, switching to Bitcoin would mean sanctions can't stop their payments anymore.

As far as I am aware, it is just a proposal from the Russian Central Bank. It has not yet made a law so nothing is there to panic just as yet. But as Russia is a communist country, there's a reason to worry as well. because communism wants full control on anything and everything. So it might be very much possible that Russia will ban all kind of crypto mining related activity in future. But I am sure they will provide an exit period for the institutional miners to move to other countries where the regulation are friendlier towards crypto mining. But it will have an impact on bitcoin market owing to the fact that Russia holds a lot of crypto mining facilities. But nothing is really permanent in the market so we will eventually overcome this.

It's difficult to really understand why Russia would ban crypto because this is their option after they get sanctioned from Swift. This geopolitics around Kazakstan and Russia is going to make crypto more useful to them instead of banning it. If any other President these days understood Crypto, it's Putin, I have watched some interviews in which he responded in a way that you would think he is a very knowledgeable bitcoiner.

I don't think that Russian central bank is not big enough force to ban Bitcoin, and there are many people inside Russia who are pro-bitcoin, president Putin even recently said that there are some advantages for mining bitcoin in Russia compared to all other countries. Officially Bitcoin is banned in China but I know many Chinese people are still using Bitcoin normally despite this ban, and this would be even easier in Russia. Yeah they are, and rest of the Europe is very dependent on those resources for electricity and heating. I think that only Germany has long term contract signed with them and other countries have to pay much higher prices now. It's funny that in the same time Russia is still under some kind of sanctions so I am sure they are using Bitcoin to avoid this sanctions.

When they're going to learn that they can't actually ban it [with the exception of CBDCs and certain stablecoins] from being used by their citizens! In other words, the former is being used as an excuse for the latter part! They only care about having full control over their citizens...

I think its will be treated as an opportunity by Russia to put more controls and get into trade exchange via bitcoin to ease ban on their banks by so many conturies.

I'm not sure this will happen but everything is possible and for now it may only be a discourse that may not be relaxed because of the war conflicts that have occurred and basically countries have banned it due to the same reason, namely the energy crisis and power control.

Russia will not be thinking of banning bitcoin when they are still legislating for its use. Bitcoin is the means that Russia can go to trade on their gas and energy because of the sanctions that includes ban from Swift taking their banks out from fiat like dollar, Euro and pounds. Banning bitcoin will not be the best decision for Russia because that is a source for financial exchange option for them

Now the scenario was changed the lot. Russia had tried to ban the Russia in the past. But after the SWIFT close the transaction with the Russian bank. The same situation was changed favor to the crypto.Because now the Russia had accepted bitcoin as their payments for most of the export from Russia.

It seems that this news is very contrary to the news that has been available so far in the Bitcoin Discussion, Economics and Speculation section, the OP mentions that Russia is banning crypto here, while Russia is adopting crypto and legal crypto. It seems the news link displayed by the OP cannot be accessed, I believe the news link is a hoax link, my suggestion is that the OP should just lock this topic, I think this is news with baseless law, there is no firm grip on it, it is legally flawed.

OP you should first fix that broken link in your post, but I have to say that article is written very bad and without any confirmation on sources used whatsoever. It's some old speculation based on old news of russian central bank, and false statements like ''crypto market is down falling'' that makes no sense. I don't know about any recent news for release of digital ruble, and I even heard that Russia will accept Bitcoin for trading with other countries. This news is pure speculation and nothing more.

That news is from before the war and so many things have change meanwhile on the financial world.. especially related to Russia... Imho the only real conclusion is that Russia is telling whatever suits them best and they are - by far - not serious about Bitcoin. I see their behavior pretty much similar to China's, just with not so big overall impact.

With the war taking place in Ukraine, the decision to ban Bitcoin in Russia would be good for the following reasons: There is an international alliance now against Russia, and the introduction of Bitcoin into this war will harm it.The volume of Russia's exports to the countries of the year is not large, and therefore Bitcoin will not occupy a large position.If Russia uses Bitcoin effectively, many countries will start banning Bitcoin, which is very badIf Bitcoin does not work effectively, it will be banned. Therefore, I personally hope that Bitcoin will be banned in Russia and we will close this door, or at least keep it away from the issue of oil and energy.

Will it harm Bitcoin or will it help the world understand Bitcoin is what you need when you want to escape authoritarian regimes and consequences of 'democracies' and the banking system? I disagree.  There is no need for the export figures to be sky high.  Be it Russia, Germany or North Korea, when you are under threat of having your assets seized, being investigated for crime you never committed and the economy shows its worst side, Bitcoin starts showing its true potential and the victims start noticing it.  As a store of value and alternative to banks and Fiat, it appears it would thrive under such conditions.  The volume may not be huge yet but it will become increasingly higher the worse the economy gets. They all HATE Bitcoin from the depths of their souls yet it never got banned.  And every time a country did, Bitcoin only continued to thrive everywhere else.  See how China and India's previous crack downs worked.  They didn't.  They only got left behind in the inevitable growth of Cryptocurrencies. - Regards, PrivacyG

Now the things was changed to new level.Because people only speaking about the old move of Russia on crypto,it was changed and Russia accepting the crypto currency now.Only the government make a change of move with some of their needs.The needs was the reason for the change,the Online transfer was happening in Russia with the crypto currency only.

As others have mentioned, when they invaded Ukraine, the West and the rest of EU has put a sanction on them. And to get away with it, they just decided to accept bitcoin and crypto just in order to survived as well. If I'm not mistaken, there are even reports that they are willing to accept bitcoin if other countries are interested on their oil. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60870100