Russia’s Central Bank Wants to Ban Cryptocurrency Investments (Report)

The central bank of Russia has now decided to take a highly unfavorable approach against the cryptocurrency industry, with new reports indicating that the organization wants to prohibit local investors from allocating funds to them.

• According to a December 16th Reuters report, the Russian central bank now wants to ban investments in digital assets, citing potential risks in relation to the country’s financial stability.
• As with previous occasions when the institution has spoken against the crypto industry, it outlined the assets’ alleged usage in malicious activities.
• The two sources familiar with the matter explained that the bank had opened talks with market players and experts on how it could proceed to implement the ban.
• If successful, the country will prohibit investors from operating with digital assets from this point forward, while the previous investments will go untouched.
• The world’s largest nation by landmass has had controversial and inconsistent views on the digital asset space for years.
• It dabbled with the idea of a ban before but never implemented it. In fact, the country’s deputy finance minister – Alexey Moiseev – recently reassured that the country has no intentions to follow China’s path and place a total ban on everything crypto.
• Some local banks, such as Neobank, have been quite open to the idea of adding cryptocurrency services. Others, though, wanted more clarity in terms of regulations before going down that road.