Russian Finance Ministry proposes punishing for using Bitcoin for buying and selling goods and services

“You can sell your bitcoin for roubles. But just to come and pay [for anything] using bitcoins — this you cannot do, it’s a constitutional principle,” stated Russia’s Deputy Finance Minister to the journalists during the interview today. “The Constitution declares that rouble is the sole payment tool on the territory of the Russian Federation, this means other payments cannot be done,” Alexei Moiseev explained.

According to him, the violation of this constitutional principle was not punished in the past, but soon the authorities will specify punishments for every case. For example, the issue of the private cryptocurrency to use it so that the Russian tax law could be avoided will be a punishable offence, and some other violations of the “rouble is the sole payment tool in Russia” principle will become an administrative offence. It should be noted here that this principle was mentioned by the Russian President who gave the corresponding instructions to the ministers this autumn.

Reports on this interview are notable in the regard that Moiseev never called Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme, and some of his colleagues lack this openness to the most popular cryptocurrency. But the creation of a cryptocurrency and token-based Ponzi scheme or pyramid will, of course, also be punished by the future cryptocurrency laws. There will be two acts — one on cryptocurrency and another — on mining and blockchain innovations.