Russia set to legalize international bitcoin and crypto trade: head of finance committee

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The head of the State Duma’s finance committee has reportedly said that Russia will legalize the use of cryptocurrency for international trade in January 2023.

Russian Congressional Finance Committee Chairman Anatoly Aksakov has said the country will give the green light to international cryptocurrency trading in the next month, according to a report by state news agency TASS.

“In January, we want to legalize cryptocurrencies to secure foreign trade activities,” Aksakov said, according to a translated version of the report.

The president stressed that while Russia is taking steps to allow bitcoin and cryptocurrency payments for imports, there are no plans to encourage similar use of the burgeoning assets within the boundaries. of the territory of the nation.

“The circulation of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment on the territory of Russia will be prohibited and liability will be prescribed in this regard,” he reportedly said. “But to pay for foreign trade transactions, we always assume the possibility of using cryptocurrencies, for example, for parallel imports.”

Russian officials have been teasing the possibility for nearly a year, following an intense set of Western sanctions rolled out following the nations’ invasion of Ukraine.

Russia presented a roadmap for bitcoin regulation in January 2022, and the Ministry of Finance submitted a proposal the following month. Around the same time, US President Biden announced the first tranche of Russian sanctions, blocking five of Russia’s largest banks and freezing all assets they held in America. A month later, Russia said it was open to selling natural gas for bitcoin.

“There can be a variety of currencies, and that’s common practice. If they want bitcoin, we’ll trade bitcoin,” the chairman of the country’s congressional energy committee, Pavel Zavalny, said during the interview. of a press conference at the time.

Soon the idea gained momentum and different sectors of the Russian government began to endorse it. In April, the country’s tax authority proposed an amendment to the local cryptocurrency bill to allow entities to accept cryptocurrency as payment in foreign trade. In May, the issue was “actively discussed” in Russia.

The Bank of Russia, which was the most difficult government body to convince given its previous calls for a complete ban on bitcoin and cryptocurrency, initially nodded to the possibility of allowing bitcoin payments for international settlements in June. In September, Russia’s central bank agreed with the finance ministry that it would be “impossible to do without cross-border cryptocurrency settlements.”

Now, as the year draws to a close, the legal basis for such payments is about to become a reality, according to the TASS report.

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