‘It is Impossible to Technically Ban Decentralized Cryptocurrencies Due to the Nature of the Internet’ – Evgeny Volovik

Evgeny Volovik is the head of the Information and Communication Department at Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service Resource Center.
The Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) reports directly to the President of the Russian Federation and is a federal executive body responsible for combating money laundering and terrorist financing.
The agency also develops and implements state policies, assesses threats to national security arising from money laundering, financing of terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and develops measures to counter these threats.
Back in August at the #CryptoForum Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, Evgeny Volovik made some interesting statements that appeared to counter the official stance of Russia’s Central Bank on cryptocurrencies. Heremarked that:
Bitcoin is not a monetary surrogate; The Federal Financial Monitoring Service has evidence that terrorists prefer fiat over digital currencies; If Russia is excluded from the world’s financial system then Russia will revert back to the time of the USSR and will trade with gold; International sanctions against Russian companies and officials don’t have teeth. If Russian is included into the FATF blacklist, it will drop down to the level of Iran. CoinTelegraph had the chance to interview Evgeny for a detailed explanation about his comments, get an idea of what we can expect from the Russian authorities as far as Bitcoin regulations are concerned, and whether a ‘Bitcoin ban’ is in the cards for Russia.

This post was published at Coin Telegraph on 2014-10-28.

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