Russian Finance Ministry plans to ban private Bitcoin trade

The Ministry of Finance of Russian Federation is planning to ban free private trade of bitcoins. This was stated by the Deputy Minister of Finance Alexei Moiseev in his interview to the Russia 24 television channel.

According to his statements, the Ministry offers to make cryptocurrencies equal to financial assets and trade them only on the Moscow Exchange under control of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring). Buy and sell activities access will be granted only to qualified investors.

This statement drastically contradicts previous Russian government public statements about how it would be good to implement cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies in the Russian financial system. However, some media outlets reported that initially the Kremlin thought altcoins are too dangerous and they should completely ban them (as they often do with things they cannot control). This measure Mr Moiseev described is not a complete ban, but it is a very strict state regulation of the market that could potentially give more money to the state if it wasn’t strictly regulated.