Due to the rapid development of the digital assets market it is becoming necessary to create laws to govern it.
The regulation of digital assets and currencies according to property law of Russia began with the passing of federal law № 259-FZ “On Digital Finance Assets, Digital Currency and on Introduction of Changes to Separate Legal Acts of the Russian Federation”. In the past, the circulation of such assets was regulated by Article 141.1 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation in regard to digital rights.
This law creates the definition of digital financial assets (DFA’s), according to the law they are digital rights that include financial requirements, the ability to exercise rights to equity securities, the right to contribute capital to private companies, the right to demand transfer of equity securities according to a decision to issue digital financial assets, the issue and circulation of which are only possible after entires are added (edited) into an informational network, based on a distributed ledger, along with other networks.
In other words, digital financial assets are tokens, which are a means of investing and exist digitally as part of a blockchain system. (a system of a distributed ledgers)
The current regulation of DFA’s is mostly focused on controlling emission and circulation of the tokens to prevent fraudulent behaviour by issuers.
The law also defines digital currency (commonly known as cryptocurrency), as an electronic data set, stored in an informational network, that is offered and (or) could be accepted as a means of payment, is not a monetary unit of Russia, other countries, or a unit of account, and (or) as an investment, it also lacks a person that would act as a Guarantor to owners of such data sets.
Therefore, the law separated the definitions of digital financial assets and digital currency, while “cryptocurrency” was left without necessary regulation, although the law (ch. 4 p. 14) dictates that issue and circulation of digital currency in Russia “… is regulated according to federal laws”.
For now, cryptocurrencies are not regulated by a specific law in Russia. While trying to take control of this market, the legislators have experienced problems and obstacles, that are yet to be addressed.
Currently, the only document about regulation of the cryptocurrency market is the bill “about digital currencies” by the Ministry of Finance, the bill is still being worked on.
According to the head of the State Duma financial market committee, Anatoly Aksakov, when it comes to regulation of the crypto market, the most likely scenario is that the government would take decisive action, based on a creation of a central platform, which would host all transactions that involve virtual funds. In other words, a national crypto exchange will be created with a single goal – to host all cryptocurrency transactions.
According to many industry experts this bill has useful ideas, such as the classification of new market participants – investors on the crypto market (qualified and unqualified), and the registration of crypto exchanges in a single registry of the Central Bank of Russia.
The proposed changed aim to form a legal digital currency market with a set of rules in regard to circulation and market participants.
For now, the discussions continue and the bill is expected to arrive to the Duma for debates this fall and go into effect by next year.