The Russian finance ministry proposed a bill named as Digital Financial Assets bill to the State Duma, lower house of the country’s parliament.The legislative proposal aims to justify cryptocurrencies in the limelight through the Russian law and to terminate all the obstacles that have retained this particular sector.As per the interpretation, the bill specifies the regulations on the cryptocurrency trading and Russian rubles.The operators who had legit license of “Securities Market” were only allowed to handle those assets.
The bill reads:
“Operators of exchanges of digital financial assets can only be legal entities established in accordance with the law of the Russian Federation and carry out the types of activities defined in articles 3, 4, 5 of the Federal Law of April 22, 1996,”In the Article 4 of the bill mandates the KYC legislation for the exchange operators:
“A digital wallet may be opened by a digital exchange operator of financial assets only after passing the procedures for identifying its owner in accordance with the Federal Law ‘On Counteraction legislation (laundering) or proceeds from crime, and financing of terrorism.”
This sets the Russian law on a par with the EU, whose members came to an consensus in mid-December 2017 that the exchanges would require to ask for proof of identity from all their users.The Russian bill does not require any specific application developers that cater standalone wallets for cryptocurrency trading.The EU measures comprised of certain provisions that would have wallet providers follow the same KYC procedures, with vague indication as how to use the wallet within the country given that citizens can just run full nodes as wallets.However, if the bill is sanctioned, cryptocurrencies will have a legal status in Russia, although a dubious one.