Major Changes Needed For Russia’s Crypto Draft Bill, Resulting In Regression To Reading Stage

The Russian government has been working to make their country welcoming to cryptocurrency, establishing a draft bill called “On Digital Financial Assets.” However, based on the review of this document, there’s a lot of amendments that need to be made. In fact, the edits needed are so extensive that it has been pushed back to the initial reading stage, according to daily newspaper Kommersant.

The newspaper notes that Pavel Krasheninnikov, the head of council and chairman of a State Duma committee, notes that there’s no connection to crypto or digital tokens in the document. Based on the wording provided, lawyers added that the regulations would directly conflict with the requirements imposed on Russian corporations.

Every single piece of terminology that would correspond with crypto or tokens instead says, “digital rights.” Unfortunately, this muddles the difference between “digital rights” and “digital financial assets.” Last month, writers of the bill even eliminated what the industry defines as “mining” for cryptocurrency. With almost a year since the draft was originally introduced, it was approved in May, during the first of three readings by the State Duma.

According to experts in September, the legislation was a sore “disappointment,” which can be largely due to the lack of coordination between writing the three bills that would apply. With all of these delays, Russia is easily falling behind the pace of other countries in the area for regulation. In fact, according to the head of research and development at Infralex, Olga Pleshanova, the current version of the bill would take the economy back by nearly three decades.

In October, the draft bill had already endured many changes. The newest version, introduced at the end of the month, said that “digital financial assets (DFAs)” would be created by private companies as digital equity. In the same month, requests to postpone the hearings until next year were initiated by a group of lobbyists named the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP). This extra time would hopefully make it easier to make the draft bill more favorable to both the entrepreneurs in the crypto space and the local regulators.

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