The central bank of Russia will launch their own, national digital currency!
The deputy chief of the Bank of Russia, Olga Skorobogatova, announced the news today at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
She talked about national cryptocurrencies being "the future", and that Russia wants to cooperate with EU countries to explore blockchain technologies:
"Regulators of all countries agree that it's time to develop national cryptocurrencies, this is the future. Every country will decide on specific time frames. After our pilot projects we will understand what system we could use in our case for our national currency. We want to jointly test blockchain for cooperating with EU countries on the projects we're going to start this year"
This is quite a significant turn of events, since Russia used to be against the use of digital currencies.
Just one year ago, the russian government even said that the use of cryptocurrency could put someone in jail! (And actually, treating bitcoin as a parallel currency is still illegal there).
Now, they're starting to not only encourage the use and growth, but are even planning to make their own digital currency, which will be ' the ONLY cryptocurrency freely buyable and tradeable in russia.'
But still, they want to establish strict monitoring rules:
A previous update included monitoring bitcoin transactions just as closely as bank transfers. This would be quite difficult to put into action though.
Skorobogatova said that this issue would be addressed again in 2-3 years, once russia had concluded how exactly they are planning to implement the cryptocurrency.
Also, a documentation regarding the taxation of cryptocurrencies will be made public this month.
She also stated that russia will use blockchain adaption in various areas within the next decade.
And this is not only regarding the financial sector, but other areas as well: within the next 7-10 years, she plans for russia to "launch the production of this technology for serious projects."
So the plans for russia's own cryptocurrency are still a few years away.
But in the meantime, they're planning to develop new regulations for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in their country.
One potential solution is to regulate bitcoin as a kind of digital good.
Since the russian government was so hesitant towards cryptocurrencies in the past (because they associate bitcoin with money laundering and terrorism) many crypto-traders are now celebrating the new regulations.
Alexey Antonov, a financial advisor at the Russian Supercomputer Organized by Network Mining (SOMN), stated:
“Thousands of people are taking part of this [blockchain] movement, you see a conference in Moscow almost every week. You see Russian blockchain media with big traffic. (...) I’m glad the Central Bank of Russia established some regulation and their own cryptocurrency. We think that in Russia there will be some official currency, it will be better for all of us, because we’ll have a method to transfer money from our blockchain companies. It’s better than nothing. (...) Maybe we can store our money and pay our taxes legally [in the future], it would be great. Right now you can’t spend bitcoin or exchange it for ruble."
Russia is actually not the only country working on a possible national cryptocurrency:
China and the Palestinian Monetary Authority also announced that they will start working on projects like these, and central banks from the UK, Singapore, Japan and South Korea are also working on more ways to accept and regulate cryptocurrencies in a broader way.
Do you think national cryptocurrencies will become real alternatives to fiat currencies in the future?
Images: 1, 2, 3, 4, Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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