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Russia’s central bank has proposed to outlaw all cryptocurrency operations in the country, one of the world’s largest centers of digital coin mining.
Russia would ban the issuance and operation of all cryptocurrencies, prevent banks from investing in cryptocurrencies, prevent the exchange of cryptocurrencies for traditional currencies, and restrict their use in purchases, according to a draft proposal published Thursday in a 36-page report. Cryptocurrencies bear legal responsibility.
“The phenomenal growth and market value of cryptocurrencies is largely defined by speculative demand for future growth, which creates bubbles,” the central bank said in the report.
“Cryptocurrencies also have the characteristics of a financial pyramid, as their price growth is largely supported by the demand of new entrants to the market,” it added.
The proposal comes after the EU’s top financial watchdog told the FT that the group should be banned The mining method used to produce new bitcoins, an energy-intensive practice called “proof of work.”
Russia’s central bank also said that cryptocurrencies would fuel already hot inflation by “limiting the sovereignty of monetary policy,” warning that it could be used “to serve illicit activities.”
According to Russia’s central bank, Russians earned around $5 billion in cryptocurrency transactions last year. Russia has also developed a booming mining industry after China banned the practice last year. East Siberia’s cheap electricity and frigid temperatures have been a boon for mining companies that rely on sprawling data centers filled with fast computers.
According to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Russia is the third largest cryptocurrency mining country after the United States and Kazakhstan. Huobi, one of the largest exchanges by volume, said in September that Russian users accounted for 10 percent of the company’s cash transactions.
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