Russia to Put More Regulations on Cryptocurrency Market, Namely ICOs

The Russian Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain (RACIB) will design a set of rules to make ICOs safer for customers to deal with, according to rbc.ru. The project aims at checking the reliability of information about the founders, the business plan, and its perspectives for the future.

According to the RACIB, last year in Russia initial coin offerings (ICOs) gathered $300 million, half of these funds were abducted by perpetrators. The financial market institution believes that this year Russian ICOs can collect up to $1.5 billion if the industry becomes more transparent and safe for investors.

A special committee within RACIB will be established in order to supervise new projects for compliance with fintech regulations. It will check whether an ICO has a website, the frequency of plagiarism in it, and information about the founders’ other projects. Furthermore, each project has to submit a white paper, a business plan, and prove its viability.

These standards will not be legally approved, they will become part of market self-regulation. Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets Anatoly Aksakov noted that the draft law "On Digital Financial Assets" only specified general approaches to regulating the ICO projects.

In 2018, ICOs have already collected more than $6 billion, with 10% of the market taken by Russian ICOs. According to various estimates, the start-ups can get around $10-15 billion in just a year.