Regulating Cryptocurrencies Is Not A Priority: Russian PM

Regulating cryptocurrencies is currently not a priority for the Russian Government since cryptocurrencies lost their popularity in the country according to the Russian Prime Minister. Dmitry Medvedev’s comments were reported by a local news outlet and reached our altcoin news today.

According to the reports, Medvedev believes that cryptocurrencies are not interesting for the Russian population and there is no need for mainstream crypto adoption and crypto regulation:

 “The popularity of cryptocurrencies has decreased so far, which likely makes the regulation issue not that relevant already.”

During the annual international judicial forum on May 15, Medvedev pointed out that the problem was previously discussed at the previous forum in 2018. He then urged the government to legislate some of the crypto terms. While Bitcoin was a hot topic in 2018 and later the hype decreased, the prime minister concluded that the time has passed. He also believes there is still no opportunity for the crypto markets to rally.

His stance comes amidst the first major bullish sentiment of crypto markets in 2019. This happened when Bitcoin surged from the average threshold of $4,000 to above $8,000 during the 45 days since April 1 according to the data gathered from CoinMarketCap.

The Russian crypto regulation bill ‘’On Digital Financial Assets’’ was initially passed by the Russian Parliament in May 2018 but it was sent right away to the first reading stage as reported in the latest cryptocurrency news, after reports emerged there is a lack of major key concepts such as crypto mining.

While the parliament of the country has delayed yet again the consideration of the bill, the president of the country Vladimir Putin ordered the government to adopt crypto regulation for the entire crypto industry by July 2019. Last year, for example, Putin made a similar order and tried to create and enforce the regulation by summer 2018.

Russia has minimal progress in regulating cryptocurrencies and crypto related policies. The central bank of the country has refused to get into cryptocurrencies or even recognize them as a mean of payment after the head of bank Elvira Nabiullina had a pretty contradictory stance on ICO fundraising calling it ‘’efficient.’’