Russia Hastens to Fine Bitcoin Users 1 Million Rubles

A group of State Duma representatives are expected to submit their own version of the bill to penalize cryptocurrency users within the next few days.
It appears that members of the State Duma are not willing to wait until the proposed law to against cryptocurrency usage is drawn up by the Ministry of Finance or the Central Bank. As reported by the Russian news agency Izvestia, a group of representatives from the ‘Spravedlivaya Rossya’ party (translated as ‘Fair Russia’) are expected to submit their version of the bill in the lower chamber of parliament within the next few days.
State Duma deputy, Andrey Krutov (Spravedlivaya Rossya) explained:
‘Cryptocurrencies pose a risk to the financial stability and the financial sovereignty of Russia. There is already enough uncertainty in the market and people taking advantage of this situation by putting their money into Bitcoin and then losing everything is something that we do not need. We created our own bill regarding the penalties for using cryptocurrencies, which will be officially submitted to the State Duma in the next few days.’
Previously, the proposed law regarding the penalties for ‘using money surrogates’ was presented by the Ministry of Finance and the prepared bill was even published on the official website for the disclosure of information. Meanwhile the Bank of Russia warned that using cryptocurrencies will be considered as an attempt to launder money and finance terrorism. Nevertheless, at least one regulator presented an opposing view back in the summer. In particular, the first deputy president of the Central Bank, Georgyi Luntovksyi admitted that ‘there is a future’ in virtual currencies.

This post was published at Coin Telegraph on 2014-12-11.