Russia Mulling Over Legalizing Digital Asset Cross-Border Payments

The Russian central bank has reached an agreement with the Finance Ministry to authorize digital currency cross-border payments, as recently reported by TASS.

Alexei Moiseev, the Deputy Finance Minister of Russia even mentioned that in the present conditions it is not possible to do without cross-border settlements in virtual assets.

In a recent interview with the TV channel Russia-24, the Deputy Finance Minister also noted that the Central Bank was rethinking the approach to the regulation of virtual currencies.

He mentioned,

“As for the regulation of the cryptocurrency market, the difference in approaches remained. But I can say that the Central Bank has also rethought [the approach] taking into account the fact that the situation has changed, and we are rethinking, because the infrastructure we plan to build is too rigid to use.”

Up till now, the Russian government, including the Russian Central Bank, have been cautious of digital assets as payment methods, and in the year 2020, a Digital Financial Assets law was passed, which prohibited the use of virtual assets like Bitcoin for payments.

However, given the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the resultant sanctions on Russia by several western nations, it seems that Moscow has come around to the idea of using digital assets for cross-border trade, saying that they are a “safe alternative” and given that they can be very difficult to trace and to avert.