Russia’s Association of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain (RACIB) has created a registry consisting of whitelisted companies that deal in cryptocurrency related products and services, Bitcoin News reports. The registry includes firms in areas like crypto mining, investment, marketing, and initial coin offerings (ICOs).
The Association noted that since the beginning of the year, these legal entities have already lost more than $4.3 million from schemes created by scammers and incompetent companies. They have already started tracking unfair ICO projects and created the registry to know who the legitimate and trustworthy companies in this sphere are.
“The list of trusted companies will allow Russian and foreign market participants to base their work on trusted organizations and minimize the risk of fraud in the creation and development of Russian or foreign business in the field of mining, trading with cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and ICO,” the Association said.
The registry contains organizations that “have gone through a voluntary verification of reliability”. The criteria for qualification include financial sustainability, experience and business reputation, lack of judicial judgments, availability of licenses and certificates and no arrears of taxes and fees. According to the Association, the initial registry contains 50 companies, “trusted organizations that have passed the verification procedure.”
Any entity that wants to be considered needs to apply online. Additional verification will soon be implemented in three areas: ‘certification of traders of crypto assets’, ‘certification of mining equipment suppliers’ and ‘certification for mining farmers’, the Association said.
The news comes at a time when the Russian Crypto Bill on the regulation of cryptocurrencies and ICOs in Russia has been delayed. However, the new registry is hoped to provide a list of trusted players in the market and therefore reduce the damage through scams and other fraudulent activities.