Cryptocurrencies are being prepared for export – Kommersant FM

Russian miners will be able to send cryptocurrency for export; the Ministry of Finance has developed a corresponding bill. The department explained that Russia has special legislation for gas supplies, and on its basis a similar one has been developed for digital assets. Amendments will be made to the document, which is already in the State Duma. It assumes that trade will be carried out using exclusively foreign infrastructure.

How will all this work? And will the Ministry of Finance want to introduce export duties? The department did not disclose details of the bill. It raised questions among many market participants, because cryptocurrencies are now sold on global exchanges without indicating the citizenship of clients.

Probably, there is another meaning behind the complex wording, believes Alexander Zhuravlev, managing partner of the EDB law firm: “Probably, this may be a prerequisite for preparing the legal ground and the subsequent use of cryptocurrency as a means of payment for limited purposes for settlements with counterparties located outside the territory of the Russian Federation .

For miners doing this on an industrial scale, this is important because they can be conduits that are used by ordinary counterparties. Today, there is an irreconcilable position of the Central Bank, which is against using cryptocurrency in payments in the country.

So, with a high degree of probability, the bill is intended specifically for foreign markets.

“As for the possible introduction of taxes, the Ministry of Finance, unlike the Central Bank, reconsidered its position a couple of years ago, and it understands perfectly well that this could become a good source of income for the budget in difficult conditions.”

Meanwhile, crypto exchanges continue to restrict transactions for Russians. Thus, Binance previously stopped making payments in rubles between clients. Other market participants have already done this; in addition, in some cases, Russians’ wallets were simply blocked.

Judging by the details announced, the new bill will not help solve this problem, but will bring cryptocurrency into the legal field, explained Egor Krivosheya, head of the blockchain and fintech laboratory at the Skolkovo School of Management. In his opinion, we should expect new control measures:

“It seems to me that technically little will change, because miners who earn something from cryptocurrencies are more likely to be included in the global rather than in the Russian network. Accordingly, they receive their profit from the sale of digital assets on global exchanges or through some other channels and infrastructures where they can earn money either for the coins that were mined or for the work that was performed.

How does this generally affect the environment? It seems to me that this allows cryptocurrencies to become a little more legal in the current field. If this is equated to export earnings or something similar, then, in my opinion, such a measure whitewashes this zone.

Accordingly, those who are engaged in mining today can somehow receive additional benefits in terms of more transparent activities, a more understandable mechanism for paying taxes, and, accordingly, more understandable processes that are directly related to the implementation of mining activities and everything that concerns this.” .

At the beginning of this year, the Russian Association of Crypto Industry and Blockchain reported that the country’s Bitcoin mining capacity is 15% of the world’s and mining volume should double in 12 months. By the summer, the Ministry of Finance estimated that cryptocurrency miners in Russia could annually contribute 20 billion rubles to the budget. in the form of taxes.

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Andrey Zagorsky