Russian Official Rubbishes Bitcoin Buying Rumour: Is Russia Averse To Crypto?

By Prashant Jha

A rumour had recently surfaced suggesting that the Russian government was planning to purchase Bitcoins (BTC) worth $10 billion this quarter but a Russian official has shot it down quite vehemently.

Russian parliament Duma has a group dedicated to cryptocurrencies and the chairperson of this group, namely Elina Sidorenko, has absolutely rubbished the rumours in no uncertain terms. What the official has said leads us to wonder if Russia will always remain this staunchly averse to cryptocurrencies.

The statement from the Duma official goes:

“This statement has no common sense. The Russian Federation — like any other country in the world — is simply not ready to combine its traditional financial system with cryptocurrencies.”

The official went on to emphasise quite strongly that in the next thirty years or so, the world should not expect too much of crypto initiative from this nation, one of the major powers in the global socio-political spectrum.

Now that the rumour has been denied, you must be wondering how it was set into motion in the first place. Well, it seems that the following statement from Vladislav Ginko, a teacher a faculty member employed in the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration prompted such speculations:

“The damage from US sanctions can be mitigated only through the use of Bitcoin. The Russian elite is forced to dump US assets and dollars and invest huge amounts of money in Bitcoin. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation will also have to diversify its reserves in the amount of $ 466 billion in case of limited opportunities for this in the future.”

Earlier this month, we also reported how Russia had refused to use Venezuelan cryptocurrency Petro in its bid to help out the fledgling economy. However, we have also seen a slightly more encouraging trend recently as it was reported that the country’s parliamentarians were considering favourable legislations for cryptocurrencies in the near future.

In fact, it seems that Russia has over 20 cryptocurrency bills that can be passed this year, which suggests it may be on its way to rethink its approach to cryptocurrencies in general.

While Russia, till now, has indeed adopted a more standoffish attitude towards crypto, it wouldn’t be fair to write it off as completely averse without first seeing what bills the Russian Duma has in store for the cryptoverse.

You May Also Read: Top 10 Cryptocurrencies for 2019