The mining bill has been approved by the State Duma Committee.
On July 12, the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets recommended that the lower house of parliament adopt the bill on regulating mining activities in the first reading, TASS reported.
The State Duma is expected to consider the document on July 23.
The current version of the mining bill was submitted at the end of April.
According to its provisions, Russian legal entities and individual entrepreneurs included in the relevant register will be able to mine digital currencies.
Individuals will be allowed to carry out such activities without being included in the register, provided they comply with government-established energy consumption limits.
The Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media will oversee compliance with these requirements. The procedure for maintaining the register is proposed to be established by a government regulation.
The bill requires miners to report mined digital currencies to the tax service, specifying the deposit address, for monitoring by Rosfinmonitoring, and also grants the government the right to ban this business in certain regions.
Combining mining with activities related to the electric power industry is prohibited.
A number of measures are envisaged to control the circulation of digital currencies, including to prevent their use for the laundering of criminal proceeds or the financing of terrorism.
The document provides for the possibility of selling digital currency obtained through mining without using the Russian information infrastructure.
The organization of circulation of digital currencies on the territory of the Russian Federation is expressly prohibited, and a ban is also established on advertising or offering in any other form to an unlimited number of persons digital currencies, as well as goods (works, services) for the organization of issue, release, organization of circulation.
“The adoption of the bill will help establish law enforcement practices that will, among other things, facilitate the further comprehensive regulation of issues related to the issuance and circulation of digital currencies,” the explanatory note states.
In July, media reported on the Russian Ministry of Finance's proposal to open access to digital currency trading for qualified investors.
According to a review of the draft law on settlements in digital currency under the experimental legal regime (ELR), settlements in digital currencies for foreign trade participants could be permitted under general, rather than special, regulation. This would require recognizing digital currency as a currency asset.
In 2022, the Moscow Exchange or the Saint Petersburg Exchange were proposed as service centers for international settlements in digital assets. The government, in turn, began developing a mechanism for facilitating such transactions.
At the same time, it became known that Russian companies were already conducting cross-border payments using cryptocurrency. These transactions were allegedly carried out “on a limited scale” for settlements with unfriendly countries.
