MOSCOW, January 17. /TASS/. Head of Sberbank Herman Gref opposes banning cryptocurrencies and calls for tolerance and patience in its regulation, he said on Wednesday.

"Before trying to regulate it, it is necessary to maintain a normal background around the blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. It is necessary to explain to people that it does not store value, but right now is rather a very dangerous thing, like a lottery or a casino. It should not be banned, as it is a great new technology in development, which no one is yet able to comprehend," he said.

It was reported earlier that the Russian Ministry of Finance expects to introduce a bill on the regulation of new financial technologies, including setting rules for circulation of cryptocurrencies and ICO in the territory of Russia, until the end of February this year. "Yes, we are planning to do it in February," Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev told reporters.

He noted that the Ministry plans to finalize the bill, including in terms of rules for cryptocurrencies’ circulation. In particular, it is necessary to determine the list of platforms suitable cryptocurrency transactions. In the near future, the developers of the bill will determine the list of such exchange platforms.

It was reported in December 2017, that the draft law on the regulation of cryptocurrency in Russia will be presented on December 28.

Bitcoin is a decentralized system based on blockchain technology, which any user - participant of the system can emit, creating new blocks of the system with the help of a computing device. The concept of the system was first published in November 2008.

In early August 2017, cryptocurrency was divided into classic bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, due to disputes about updates, which were supposed to increase the speed of transaction processing.

Russian Minister of Communications and Mass Media Nikolai Nikiforov said earlier he believes that Russia is unlikely to legalize bitcoin. Although earlier in October, it was reported that Russia's Communication Ministry has submitted to the government the document containing technical details related to cryptocurrencies adoption.