Russian Ruling Party Says Crypto Regulation Will Safeguard ‘Millions of Citizens’

cryptonews.com:

United Russia, the nation’s ruling party, says that some 12% of the population uses or interacts with crypto – and senior political figures stated that it will protect crypto holders with its forthcoming regulations.

The comments came from Anton Gorelkin, the Deputy Chairman of the State Duma’s Committee on Information Policy, while an MP and member of the parliamentary working group on the legislative regulation of crypto, Alexander Yakubovsky, added that the “legalization” of crypto could help Russians struggling with Western-led economic sanctions, per Regnum and Kopeysky Rabochiy.

The MP added that the existing bill submitted by the Ministry of Finance prior to the military operation in Ukraine would allow crypto mining to become a “new type of economic activity,” although he insisted that mining should be divided into two sectors: so-called “home mining” and industrial crypto mining.

Osman Kabaloev, the head of banking regulation at the Financial Policy Department of the Ministry of Finance, added that legally defining terms like “crypto mining” and “crypto exchange” would help achieve this goal.

Gorelkin was quoted as stating that 12% of Russians have had experience with crypto “transactions” in one form or another, and added:

“If you look behind the percentages, that represents millions of citizens. And our task is to protect these people from the threats associated with the shadow circulation of cryptocurrency, fraudulent activities, as well as their use in criminal calculations and the uncertainty of the status of the sites they use.”

The latter point may have been a reference to the fact that many major crypto exchanges are now under increasing pressure to block Russian IP addresses amidst the country's invasion of