On September 15, the Authorities of the Russian Central Bank said to work with the Russian local banks to more clearly prohibit the use of cryptocurrency.
The country’s largest data centers operators and cryptocurrency mining colocation services provider, BitRiver aren’t likely to get affected according to the firm’s CEO. The founder and the CEO of the BitRiver, Igor Runets said:
New restrictions planned by Russia’s central bank will unlikely affect any of its clients, as the firm does not operate a crypto mining facility but rather provides data centers for foreign companies. We don’t send crypto to exchanges; we have none of our own equipment, and this bank’s move will not affect our clients because they operate in foreign jurisdictions.
The company said it was ready for the crypto crackdown in Russia. It has already recommended it’s russian customers to set up a foreign company to use BitRiver’s crypto data centers. Igor Runets said, “Now we have no problem”. He further explained,
From time to time, we hear that clients want to make a company in Russia so that it is more convenient to deliver equipment from abroad. But even for them, the Bank of Russia doesn’t really bother since the cryptocurrency doesn’t enter the account of a Russian company.
The Bank of Russia’s new anti-crypto measures come months after the country adopted its major crypto law, “On Digital Financial Assets,” in January. The first deputy governor at the Bank of Russia, Sergey Shvetsov said,
We are now considering amending the law to more clearly prohibit the use of cryptocurrency and introduce additional administrative and criminal liabilities.
The bank did not clearly clarify that upto what extent and what kind of transactions would be restricted. The bank do noted that it wants to halt the payments to crypto exchanges in order to protect customers from “emotional” purchases of crypto.
A former Deloitte employee commented that this move is planned to prevent the digital currencies to flow in the country because Russia is planning to launch a project to introduce digital ruble, the country’s central bank digital currency project.
Nikita Soshnikov, a former senior lawyer at Deloitte CIS said, “I expect new official documents and legislative proposals, where ‘allowed’ operations with a digital ruble, will be opposed to ‘illegal’ crypto transactions.”