Kremlin and blockchain: recent statements and initiatives

On a recent Open Innovations forum in Russia, the public has seen many influential people expressing their view on the blockchain, overall positive.

Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, decided to talk about Russian-made blockchain projects. He told that cryptocurrency market boom and other blockchain initiatives could generate serious risks without precise rules. “We’re not going to build a digital kolkhoz, we will promote our creations on the global market,” the PM stressed. He meant by that that Russian digital projects should not be primitive and limited to the regional level. Later, he suggested to implement blockchain within testing sandbox environments first in order not to harm the market.

Maxim Oreshkin, head of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, joked that if the artificial intelligence existed, Bitcoin would be its first invention. Talking more seriously, he told that future possible AI could benefit from mining farms’ computing power.

German Gref, head of Russian Sberbank, tells that blockchain would cause a drama on the bank market. Todat, it has become known that his organization joins the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.

Vneshekonombank is another state organization that would like to implement blockchain more, as it was stated by its representative on the forum. Other people involved in cable TV channel high management companies talked about planned cooperation of Russia, India and Bahrain in the blockchain sphere.

From now on, one can judge with certainty that Russian political establishment chose to take regulative, pre-moderative approach, but the legislation is still being developed with deadlines unclear. One of the reasons why the Russian government decided not to forbid a decentralized technology this time is that the ICO market benefits are very big. As the Russian RBC outlet tells, Russian ICO projects have attracted $293 million, which is already bigger than traditional venture funding.