In Russia, the law on cryptocurrency will soon work: what will it change for market participants?
In the fall of 2017, the Russian president instructed the Central Bank and the government to develop legislative measures to regulate the sphere of cryptocurrency and blockchain. According to the list of instructions of the president, the new laws should be earned July 1, 2018.
Six months later, in May 2018, the State Duma of Russia in the first reading approved the draft laws “On digital financial assets”, “On attracting investments using investment platforms” and “On digital rights”.
Until day X, when the new measures take effect, there is not much time left, and there is not very much clear and structured information about what exactly will change. Therefore, I conducted a small analysis of what awaits the users and participants of the crypto-community of Russia in the near future.
Miners will be forced to pay taxes
Lawmakers are planning to deposit miners to the FTS registry and force them to pay taxes, although “tax holidays” are possible for a period of two to three years - this will stimulate the legalization of business.
In a conversation with a REGNUM journalist, one of the authors of the law, deputy Anatoly Aksakov, commented on the initiative:
“We believe that miners should be included in the register of the Federal Tax Service and pay taxes. For the legalization of business, it is my opinion, at first, maybe for two or three years to establish a moratorium on taxation ... if it is a small business, small amounts, then a simplified taxation system. Big business - the usual taxation, income tax, maybe, VAT. "
In this case, the official believes that the authorities have yet to finalize the definition of mining. While the determining factor is the consumption of electricity.
The exchange of cryptocurrency for fiat money will be controlled by the Central Bank
Today, users can exchange cryptocurrency in online exchangers (according to the Russian Askoin aggregator, there are about 400 of them today), as well as in offices of crypto exchangers or Bitcoin-ATMs - recently journalists, using the specialized search engine Bitmap, found 11 offline offline cryptocurrency exchanges in Moscow ( all in Russia - about 70).
Map of Moscow crypto-exchangers
According to the theses of the new law, the possibility of exchanging “digital assets” into rubles or foreign currency is allowed. However, the mechanism for regulating this process has not yet been registered - it says only that "the order and conditions of such transactions will additionally determine the Central Bank together with the government."
There will be "operators of the exchange of digital financial assets"
Today there are a large number of ways to buy cryptocurrency - on the exchanges, using bitcoin exchangers or terminals. There are options for services that require verification to perform operations (for example, the American Bittrex service ), and those where verification is not required (for example, one of the oldest crypto exchangers in Matbi runet ).
Today in RuNet it is easy to buy cryptocurrencies without verification
Now, according to excerpts from the bill published in winter in the Russian newspaper, it is supposed to create special operators of digital financial assets - qualified investors will be able to exchange cryptocurrencies and tokens for other cryptoactives only through the accounts of this operator. According to RBC, the size of their own funds of such operators should exceed 5 million rubles, they can not be banks or non-credit financial institutions.
ICO tokens will be able to issue only legal entity and SP
In addition, the conduct of ICO in order to attract funding in Russia will be allowed only to legal entities and individual entrepreneurs.
At the same time, qualified investors will be able to participate in such tokens (this is a good article on Banki.ru on how to get this status), for “unqualified” investors (that is, for the majority of the population), the volume of acquired tokens will be limited to 50,000 rubles.
Conclusion
New laws received conflicting feedback from participants in the crypto industry.
So in a conversation with Pravo.ru, Igor Sudets, member of the Expert Council of the State Duma on digital economics and blockchain technologies, also expressed the opinion that “an attempt to settle all wallets, exchangers and cryptocurrency exchanges will lead to the fact that they will not receive special permissions, and just go into the shadow economy. " The expert also doubted that the new laws would create an attractive investment environment in the Russian jurisdiction.
In turn, according to the quoteRBC, the Russian Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain (RACIB) at the moment, the laws do not take into account issues related to the acquisition or placement of tokens by Russian legal entities and individuals in foreign jurisdictions. As a result, it will be easier for investors to move to more loyal states, and full regulation of the industry in Russia will not be introduced anyway.