Cut Central Bank out of Russian Crypto Regulation Picture, Urges Lawyer as Ukraine War Rages On

cryptonews.com:

The time has come to fast-track crypto mining regulation, a leading Russian lawyer has advised – even if this means removing the Central Bank from the equation.

The bank is opposed to all forms of crypto, including mining – and has proposed two recent bills that seek to outlaw crypto ownership, mining and transactions made using tokens on Russian soil. However, the war in Ukraine – and the West and its allies’ sanctions have made crypto a much more pressing matter for Russia.

Although the Central Bank has been too busy fighting conventional economic fires in recent days to debate crypto regulation with the more moderate Ministry of Finance, the bank has traditionally dug its heels in on the matter, slowing the progress of crypto regulation despite calls for urgent legislation.

Prior to the Ukraine war, even president Vladimir Putin had attempted to intervene, with the Russian crypto mining industry showing growth in recent years.

But Maria Agranovskaya, a managing partner at the Moscow Bar Association-affiliated Grad Legal & Financial Advisory Services and a member of the working group on the regulation of cryptoassets at the State Duma (Russia’s parliament), told the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum that “in Russia, regulations pertaining to “cryptocurrency and mining” were “needed right now.”

She suggested that the “long process” could be cut short by “removing cryptocurrencies” from the remit of the Central Bank and appointing other bodies to oversee the sector, such as the Ministry of Energy or the financial regulator Rosfinmonitoring. These bodies, she noted, have already come up with concrete proposals to regulate the industry.

Agranovskaya was quoted by Vedomosti as stating:

“The [government] has already banned the sale of