based on materials from the website - By Cryptopolitan_News
Starting next year, Russian authorities plan to introduce fines for cryptocurrency payments, which have been banned since 2021.
According to the new law, the use of digital coins as a means of payment in the country will also be punishable by asset confiscation.
Russians will be fined for paying with cryptocurrencies.
Payments with decentralized digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, will lead to substantial fines for Russian citizens and businesses starting in 2026, local media reports, citing a prominent State Duma deputy.
The head of the Committee on the Financial Market, Anatoly Aksakov, told the newspaper 'Izvestia' about the government's plan. He informed Daily Daily that deputies will consider a bill introducing fines this autumn to define responsibility in the context of the 'gray zone.'
According to a bill developed jointly by the Bank of Russia and the Ministry of Finance, individuals making payments in cryptocurrency will face fines ranging from 100,000 to 200,000 rubles (over 2,500 US dollars), while companies will be fined between 700,000 and 1 million rubles (almost 13,000 US dollars).
Additionally, the bill provides for the confiscation of illegally used cryptocurrencies in favor of the state, the publication notes. In April, the executive authority of Moscow approved amendments legalizing the confiscation of cryptocurrency by recognizing it as property within the framework of criminal proceedings.
Since January 1 of this year, crypto assets are also recognized as property in the Tax Code for regulating taxation of related activities, such as mining, which was legalized in 2024, and cryptocurrency trading, allowed under certain circumstances.
Although the exact amounts of monetary fines were announced by the director of the legal department of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), Andrey Medvedev, during the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum in May, it remains unclear when they will come into effect.
There are many options for using cryptocurrency in payments in Russia.
Russian financial authorities are firmly opposed to the legalization of domestic cryptocurrency payments, arguing that the ruble, including its digital form, should remain the only legal means of payment.
At the same time, they also agreed to monitor the 'experimental legal regime' (ELR) that facilitates cryptocurrency exchange and settlements in foreign trade to help Russian companies circumvent Western sanctions.
The use of cryptocurrency for payment of goods and services in Russia has been prohibited since the enactment of the law 'On Digital Financial Assets' (DFA) in 2021. Despite this, Russians continue to spend digital coins, and the number of such transactions increased 2.5 times in the first year of the war in Ukraine, which began in 2022.
Cases of cryptocurrency use include not only remittances abroad to circumvent financial restrictions but also payment of wages to employees, for example, developers who have moved to other countries. Last week, the newspaper 'Izvestia' quoted a warning from labor authorities that paying salaries in cryptocurrency will also incur significant fines for companies.
Payment in cryptocurrency is often associated with informal employment, information security specialist Alexey Gorelkin told the publication. He explained:
"This is a common option for Russian citizens who work remotely in our country for companies outside of Russia. At the same time, Russian companies rarely work with cryptocurrency directly, preferring to use it as additional motivation, property incentives, rather than salary payments."
According to Ivan Kalmykov, an IT expert cited by the publication, video games have provided yet another opportunity to use digital currencies for payments. Web3 platforms often prefer to conduct transactions in cryptocurrencies created within their gaming projects.
Various services and Telegram bots processing cryptocurrency payments, including those using QR codes, are also very popular in Russia. It is estimated that up to 400 of them continued to operate two years after the ban on cryptocurrency payments was introduced.
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