Russia Plans to Mine Bitcoin/Crypto for Cross-Border Transactions, Central Bank Says

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The Bank of Russia is working on a bill that will introduce an experimental legal regime for cryptocurrencies to be used exclusively in import-export agreements, head of the regulator Elvira Naiullina said Monday, according to the news agency. Russian TASS.

Crypto trading and payments within Russia must remain banned, Naiullina added.

The country’s government is also working on a bill that will create a national agency to license and supervise cryptocurrency platforms operating in Russia, local newspaper Vedomosti wrote on Tuesday, citing Economic Policy Committee member Sergei Altukhov. of the Russian parliament. Altukhov added that a new tax code will be introduced for minors as part of the settlement.

Speaking to a parliamentary faction of the New People political party on Monday, Nabiullina said the central banks’ plan includes the creation of special organizations that will be appointed to mine crypto and process payments for cross-border trade deals. It is unclear what these organizations might still be. BitRiver, one of Russia’s largest mining companies, previously partnered with state-affiliated oil company Gazpromneft.

Digital assets issued in Russia, according to local law passed in 2020, can also be used for such cross-border transactions on the same basis as global decentralized cryptocurrencies, Nabiullina added.

Naliullinas MP Alexey Guznov added that the Bank of Russia is currently in talks with the government to define what kind of organizations can participate in the experiment, what their business models should look like and which banks they will use. At the start of the experiment, these will likely be government-sponsored companies, he said.

The Bank of Russia and the country’s Finance Ministry agreed earlier that Russia cannot avoid using crypto payments in the current situation, TASS wrote, referring to international sanctions imposed on the country to bar it from the US dollar-powered global payment infrastructure.

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