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Russia’s Finance Ministry to prepare proposals for regulating cryptocurrency

Earlier, the head of Sberbank spoke in favor of legalizing cryptocurrency

MOSCOW, June 8. /TASS/. The Russian Finance Ministry is going to finalize proposals for regulating cryptocurrencies, one of which will be mandatory identification for buyers of electronic money, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev told reporters.

"Now we are working on it, we believe it is promising. Regarding the regulation, the Ministry of Finance proposes to regulate the turnover of crypto-currencies based on principles that apply to derivatives," he said, adding that the Ministry will present its proposals to the government in a month and a half.

Moiseev also talked about the need for mandatory identification of buyers of cryptocurrencies. "If you want to buy any financial product, you need to show passport, fill out a contract, write that you are not an American taxpayer. The same should apply here," Moiseev said.

Earlier, of Governor Elvira Nabiullina said that the regulator intends to carefully study the principles of the cryptocurrency and only then introduce its regulation.

Deputy Governor of the Central Bank Olga Skorobogatova said that the regulator would develop a national cryptocurrency.

"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," Skorobogatova said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2017 (SPIEF-2017).

Earlier, Head of Sberbank Herman Gref was in favor of legalizing cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin is the world’s most famous cryptocurrency and a digital payment system invented by an unknown programmer, or a group of programmers, under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. It was released as open-source software in 2009 and since then has been steadily gaining popularity among Internet users. However, recently its situation began to deteriorate due to legislative restrictions imposed in several countries.

Bitcoin is not regulated by any country or banking supervisory authority. It can guarantee complete anonymity of a person or a group of people using it.