The term ‘cryptocurrency’ has presented plenty of headaches for lawyers, who’ve been recently attempting to create new legal definitions for the industry in Russia. According to Izvestia, lawmakers have removed the mention of cryptocurrency altogether from the latest version of the bill.
Russian traders and investors in cryptocurrencies have been pushing since the beginning of the year for the Russian government to regulate its cryptocurrency industry. While leading banks and financial institutions in Russia have voiced their willingness to work with cryptocurrencies – due largely to increased demand from Russian investors – the government has opted to remove all mention of ‘cryptocurrency’ terminology from its legal documentation, Izvestya wrote.
The framework was originally scheduled for adoption in July when three bills were submitted in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, as ordered by President Putin. Nevertheless, government deputies battled in vain to synchronize and combine the draft bills into a unified piece of legislation.
Russian lawmakers have instead confirmed that a revised framework for “digital financial assets” will be unveiled for public discussion later in the autumn, with the aim of securing regulatory adoption by the end of 2018 for Russia’s crypto investors.
This month, a new draft law on digital financial assets, an alternative to the one already developed by authorities, was proposed by an organization that unites some of the leading enterprises in Russia.
The version, prepared by Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), contains the legal term “cryptocurrency” and differentiates it from tokens. The bill authored by the grants cryptocurrencies a “special status,” according to Elina Sidorenko, the head of the interdepartmental group assessing cryptocurrencies.
