Why Russia’s Draft ‘Anti-Bitcoin’ Law May Be Flawed

Artem Tolkachev is a managing partner at Tolkachev & Partners law firm. The Moscow-based company specializes in intellectual property and contract development, and represents Internet businesses including those in the field of bitcoin and blockchain technology.
In this article, Tolkachev examines Russia’s recently announced draft bill on ‘money surrogates’ to see to see if a ban for digital currencies is really on the cards.
A draft of a new Administrative Violations Code was submitted to the State Duma, the Russian Parliament, in December 2015. The bill is an extensive document covering a wide range of issues including tough regulation of ‘money surrogates’. But what might it mean for bitcoin and other digital currencies?
Vladimir Pligin, head of the State Duma’s Constitutional Law and State Building Committee, has indicated the new bill will be considered by the Duma this February.
Still, it is uncertain how this comprehensive document will be considered by the Duma in such a short period of time.
The section on money surrogates in the bill is very specific and brief. In all likelihood, nobody in the Duma is going to pay particular attention to the section on money surrogates, and the bill could be enacted without any major amendment to this section.
The bill defines money surrogates as “objects of property rights including electronic ones intended for use as a medium of payment and/or exchange that are issued in the Russian Federation and are not considered as an official medium of payment in Russia”.
Hence bitcoin should simultaneously meet all these criteria to be qualified as the money surrogate in Russia.

This post was published at Coin Desk on Artem Tolkachev /January 29, 2016.