Russia To Launch Their Own National Cryptocurrency & Allow Bitcoin Trading Again 🇷🇺
The central bank of Russia will launch their own, national digital currency!
The deputy chief of the Bank of Russia, Olga Skorobogatova, announced the news today at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
She talked about national cryptocurrencies being "the future", and that Russia wants to cooperate with EU countries to explore blockchain technologies:
"Regulators of all countries agree that it's time to develop national cryptocurrencies, this is the future. Every country will decide on specific time frames. After our pilot projects we will understand what system we could use in our case for our national currency. We want to jointly test blockchain for cooperating with EU countries on the projects we're going to start this year"
This is quite a significant turn of events, since Russia used to be against the use of digital currencies.
Just one year ago, the russian government even said that the use of cryptocurrency could put someone in jail! (And actually, treating bitcoin as a parallel currency is still illegal there).
Now, they're starting to not only encourage the use and growth, but are even planning to make their own digital currency, which will be ' the ONLY cryptocurrency freely buyable and tradeable in russia.'
But still, they want to establish strict monitoring rules:
A previous update included monitoring bitcoin transactions just as closely as bank transfers. This would be quite difficult to put into action though.
Skorobogatova said that this issue would be addressed again in 2-3 years, once russia had concluded how exactly they are planning to implement the cryptocurrency.
Also, a documentation regarding the taxation of cryptocurrencies will be made public this month.
She also stated that russia will use blockchain adaption in various areas within the next decade.
And this is not only regarding the financial sector, but other areas as well: within the next 7-10 years, she plans for russia to "launch the production of this technology for serious projects."
So the plans for russia's own cryptocurrency are still a few years away.
But in the meantime, they're planning to develop new regulations for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in their country.
One potential solution is to regulate bitcoin as a kind of digital good.
Since the russian government was so hesitant towards cryptocurrencies in the past (because they associate bitcoin with money laundering and terrorism) many crypto-traders are now celebrating the new regulations.
Alexey Antonov, a financial advisor at the Russian Supercomputer Organized by Network Mining (SOMN), stated:
“Thousands of people are taking part of this [blockchain] movement, you see a conference in Moscow almost every week. You see Russian blockchain media with big traffic. (...) I’m glad the Central Bank of Russia established some regulation and their own cryptocurrency. We think that in Russia there will be some official currency, it will be better for all of us, because we’ll have a method to transfer money from our blockchain companies. It’s better than nothing. (...) Maybe we can store our money and pay our taxes legally [in the future], it would be great. Right now you can’t spend bitcoin or exchange it for ruble."
Russia is actually not the only country working on a possible national cryptocurrency:
China and the Palestinian Monetary Authority also announced that they will start working on projects like these, and central banks from the UK, Singapore, Japan and South Korea are also working on more ways to accept and regulate cryptocurrencies in a broader way.
Do you think national cryptocurrencies will become real alternatives to fiat currencies in the future?
Images: 1, 2, 3, 4, Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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To me this is bad news. I can’t help it but the state cryptocurrency feels like centralized decentralized Blockchain. That to me is undesirable. Also the cryptocurrency as it is shouldn’t be regulated. I mean tax the real money when you’re exchanging for it…you have a right to do so I guess… but regulating it just like that? That’s like taking a portion of grown corn. But then again it’s Russia… Or am I wrong? I’m new to crypto still.
You're right.
The national digital currency would be issued by russia's state bank, so it definitely wouldn't be decentralized anymore.
I still think this is a positive development though, because russia is at least recognizing the potential beenfits of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
The good thing about it is that blockchain would be more recognized, therefore make its way more into the “real life”, but the question is whether those actions of Russia wont motivate other countries to regulate it too, until it will be regulated everywhere and by that ripping part of the blockchain’s philosophy from it.
Can someone explain to me why it's logical or necessary to have a national cryptocurrency? I thought one of the points of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies was to eventually become a standard international currency that people from all countries could use freely - to create a currency that anyone could accept no matter where they are located. I guess my question is why does Russia want to make their own currency when Bitcoin and many alternatives are already available? What is the purpose?
Thanks!
It is logical because it allows the state to attempt to maintain control over the money supply, whereas they have very little control over the current cryptocurrency economy. This is simply an attempt to try to displace the current free money systems with a digital version of state controlled fiats hoping a large proportion of the population will not know the difference. Simply it boils down to the money masters trying to hold the reins a little bit longer.
They just want to be able to control the monetary system but of course it will not work. You are right, national blockchain currencies defeat the purpose of what bitcoin was made for. They can try all the want but the free market will choose what coins have value and no country can do anything to change that.
" BITCOIN FOR THE PEOPLE" "Steem for the People"
I think Russia is just very skeptical towards bitcoin still. Like mentioned above, they actually had very strict laws against it.
By building their own digital currency, they can have the benefits, but still make their own rules and monitor and regulate the currency however they like.
And since the currency will be issued by russia's central bank, it's not really a decentralized cryptocurrency anymore.
Thanks for the reply. It seems like it's just a way for them to stay in control as they see how we are heading towards an economy that primarily uses cryptocurrencies. However, I do wonder if they will be able to "print" cryptocurrency to bail themselves out of debts like many countries do with cash. I imagine this currency won't be mineable, as the central bank is regulating it, so they can probably do whatever they want. Kind've scary! I guess we just have to wait and see.
@sirwinchester THANK You... 4 the Heads-Up... I think this is good news and it gives even more credence to cryptocurrency globally... is that correct ?
I'm 16 days new and have a lot to learn... been following You for 10 days now... please consider following me. Thanks Again 4 the information.
UpVoted & will ReSteem a bit later tonight. Thanks Again !!
Thank you for the support!
Yes these are definitely good news, I wonder what would happen to "traditional" cryptocurrencies (like BTC, ETH etc) if we really adapt national cryptocurrencies.
Excellent question... my gut feeling suggests that cryptos that specialize in full privacy will do well...which means Bitcoin will do well as long as it keeps strong privacy features in place.
Just a side note a very recent coin called Mysterium Network supposedly has very strong privacy, but I'm no expert...even though I have over 35 yrs working at a high level in the traditional banking arena with a number of the Fortune 100 in the Bond Markets... most of the transactions I was involved with were between $5 to $50 million per transaction... although I did have one client that did between $350 to $750 million... usually 2 times a month... but most of these transactions were 20 yrs ago and were considered very large... now, not so much. >> : ~ ))
Just ReSteemed this post and spent a little bit of money to Promote this post also.
Thanks Again 4 Posting... Have a Great Weekend !!
wow thank you, that's awesome!
And yes, privacy-protecting / anonymous coins are definitely getting more popular, just like bytecoin and monero.
Gov and bank coins just legitimize crypto further. Hopefully the masses will still have interest in public blockchains!
It already started, lots of mainstream companies are adapting blockchain technologies - and the number is growing!
Cryptocurrency is the way of the future, nice to see Russia getting on board!
I can't believe trading cryptocurrencies was illegal there until now - about time they realized its huge potential!
Is it going to be open source? Will mining be open to random anonymous people all over the world? I mean, will it be decentralized?
My guess is no. It will be centralized. It will be controlled. And it will fail when people catch on.
Same did Dubai, here is the title of an article of a week ago: "OneGram & Dubai Trading Platform In $500M 'Gold-Backed' Cryptocurrency Venture" in Bloomberg. This is a gold backed cryptocurrency.
One of the first things I thought might happen when I learned about blockchain and cryptos was that national currencies would attempt to make there own. Of course, government's and banks should fear the future of a world that doesn't need them anymore.
Yes that's true. Also, they fear losing control with decentralized cryptocurrencies, so they'd rather create their own.
This is the future of crypto, unfortunately. Invest in Monero, or whatever coin has the best privacy features. Eventually they will all be outlawed, so only the coins that keep you and your transactions a secret are future-proof. There will be an "approved" national cryptocurrency and everything else will be seen as a tax evasion mechanism.
Governments have to realize that when blockchain is done, income tax will be too. They will have to go back to taxing property and tangible luxury assets heavily like they should have been doing since the beginning, instead of targeting their massive tax books at the little people and allowing the ultra rich to jump through all of the loop holes they've built in to it.
Public blockchains do not reveal who owns a wallet. As long as you don't reveal your identity knobody can know. All chains are safe for ever and can never be controlled.
There will be publically approved whitelisted wallets that will be associated with individuals. Transactions conducted from unassociated/blacklisted addresses will be investigated. The forensic tools for hunting through the blockchain are becoming sophisticated. If you think the intelligence and policing communities aren't spending tens of billions of dollars developing technology to monitor blockchains you are living in la-la land.
Please explain to me how unassociated/blacklisted addresses can be traced to a person?? it exists only in cyberspace
Unless you bought bitcoin through localbitcoins.com, you bought them with a credit card or some other means that can be traced back to the hash that was generated and associated with your credit card at that time. You can tumble all you want, but the blockchain is a TRANSPARENT ledger that records all activity. You could swap between cryptos and all that to hide your trail, but to do that you're going to be using exchanges, which generally verify some information for you to gain access to higher tiers and features. Cashing out from crypto into fiat especially requires you to go through quite painful identification processes.
A country could simply packet-sniff and block all traffic that looks like whatever crypto they want to ban and force you to use the national crypto. They do this in China to block Tor users, so they have to use bridge nodes in order to escape the great firewall. Not without its risks.