Materials by tag Russia

Recently Russians woke up to the news of a new prime minister following a number of events that saw the government resigning. The new PM, who served as the head of  Russian tax services Mikhail Mishustin has  supported cryptocurrency for quite some time. The prime ministers vowed to transform the modern blockchain powered state for the benefit of Russians.

The Russian Supreme Court has made it clear that “digital rights,” which is a term used to mean coins and tokens in the country’s law, can be used to facilitate illegal activities such as bribes, in the same way as fiat currency, property and other valuable assets are.

For over two years now, there has been an ongoing fight between the courts of different countries over the case involving founder of BTC-e Alexander Vinnik from Russia, suspected to have illegally stolen huge sums of Bitcoin (in billions) by Mark Karpeles, the French founder of the collapsed Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox. Now, the case looks to be reaching its end.

Last week on Friday, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation made a negative statement against Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies, stating that their fiat currency known as the ruble should be the country’s only legal tender instrument.

An unidentified message was sent to the Russian Railways intimidating with thrilling violence of bombing stations if a named amount of cryptocurrency in bitcoin worth $642,815 (50 BTC or approx. 30 million rubles) aren’t transferred to them as soon as possible. The event has tempted the country’s police to start the investigation into the matter.

The Department of Information Technologies of Moscow (DIT) recently revealed an auction to develop an Ethereum-based distributed ledger tech (DLT) system which can offer administrative electronic services to over 50.2 million residents living in the federal city of Russia, Open Media reports.

US prosecutors recently filed an official complaint against presently-nonoperational cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e and alleged cybercriminal Alexander Vinnik, as per a document filed on Thursday last week in California. Alexander also purportedly holds accounts connected with other major illegal activities, such as the hack of another nonoperational exchange Mt. Gox.

The Russian arms producer, Soyuzmash, seeks to bypass US sanctions using cryptocurrency. The Union of Machine Builders recently requested permission from the Central Bank of Russia to allow it accept payments in Bitcoin for all its activities related to weapons. They believe this will enable them doge the US and other existing international sanctions. Russia is the world’s second main exporter of arms, commanding 21% of the global market, following the US with around 36%.

The 4th largest international forum on blockchain and cryptocurrencies Blockchain Life 2019 takes place in Moscow on October 16th—17th.