Lobby Group of Russia Set to Present an Alternative Digital Currency Bill

By Kapil Gauhar

As reported by Forklog on September 14, a Russian lobby group is working on an alternative digital currency bill with an aim to eliminate supposed contradictions in the state draft law “On Digital Financial Assets.”

A group of high-ranked Russian managers like Viktor Vekselberg and Vladimir Potanin, who are listed as the top ten richest businessmen of Russia by Forbes, will develop the alternative bill.

The expert council for lobby group is set by the representatives of various departments, ministries and the Russian State Duma.

As indicated by the RSPP vice-president Elina Sidorenko, the new bill will split virtual assets into 3 groups including Tokens, Cryptocurrencies and digital signs. She also stated that cryptocurrencies are to be treated differently:

“Cryptocurrencies will have a special status, which has never appeared in Russian legislation before and will be regulated by laws and regulations that will be issued by the Russian Central Bank. The Central Bank will issue licenses for exchange operations. In this regard, the status of crypto owners will be notably facilitated in comparison to securities owners.”

Elina Sidorenko emphasised that the tokens would also fall under the law on securities and “digital sign” issuers would not need to apply for the licences from Central Bank. However, she didn’t define what did she mean by “digital sign”.

Sidorenko believes that the alternative bill will prove to be helpful to eliminate all the contradictions in the states bill that she calls “unfinished and fragmented”. The RSPP document, Per Sidorenko will rely on the actual legal framework in Russia and will also consider other countries’ experience.

Forklog reports, the alternative bill first has to be approved by the RSPP, which will then be discussed with Russian officials later in October.

The State Duma accepted the bill “On digital Financial Assets” in the first of three readings in May 2018. The law defined tokens and cryptocurrencies as property and soon drew the objection from industry figures.