Russia’s Ministry of Finance is continuing to push regulations for the cryptocurrency industry by proposing new tax requirements. The ministry now reportedly wants to introduce criminal liability for failure to declare taxes on crypto, including prison terms of up to three years. According to a Sept. 24 report by Kommersant, the ministry proposes that individuals who fail to report an amount of over 1 million Russian rubles ($13,000) in annual crypto operations should serve a three-year prison term or hard labor. The ministry also proposed major fines for smaller unreported amounts. As such, any physical or legal entity in Russia …

Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov, addressing the higher chamber of the Russian parliament on Wednesday, named blockchain as one of the technologies that the government will prioritize in the near future. Belousov said that the government will support technologies that facilitate the interactions between the state and the largest corporations. In addition to blockchain, he named a number of other key technologies: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, new materials, quantum sensing, microelectronics, Internet of Things, 5G, quantum communications and energy. Belousov also said that in order to foster the development of these technologies, the government would have to create …

Major cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Global is expanding in Russia by rolling out its native mobile app in the country. Users in Russia can now access Huobi’s spot market and trade major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) through its mobile app, the firm announced on Wednesday. By introducing the app in Russia, Huobi wants to further expand in one of its most important markets. Russian users account for as much as 10% of Huobi’s total spot trading volume, an exchange representative told Cointelegraph. Ciara Sun, vice president of global markets at Huobi Group, said that Huobi’s move to strengthen its position in …

Former police chief Yuri Zaitsev was recently sentenced to eight years in prison for acting as a bounty hunter for a dark web marketplace. In December 2018, Zaitsev was working as the leader of his unit within the Main Directorate for Drugs Control of the Republic of Khakassia — a law enforcement division analogous to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA. At that time, he initiated contact with the operator of a darknet marketplace, offering to help hunt down a man who had appropriated drugs that were entrusted to him for placement in dead drops. In Russia, unlike …

The United States has taken actions against international hackers responsible for the theft of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. On September 16, the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced it has imposed sanctions on two Russian nationals who used a sophistication phishing campaign to steal at least $16.8 million from the customers of three virtual currency exchanges in 2017 and 2018 — including two based in the United States. The pair, Danil Potekhin and Dmitrii Karasavidi, created multiple websites impersonating legitimate crypto exchanges …

Russian pop singer Oleg Kenzov has completed the first digital rights transfer of a song he wrote using a blockchain platform backed by the government. According to VC.ru, the studio Soyuz reached a licensing agreement deal with music service FONMIX to distribute Kenzov’s song “Po Kaifu” to stores, restaurants, and gyms who wish to use it for marketing purposes. The historic blockchain rights transfer was held in the presence of top music industry players from major record companies and labels such as Warner Music Russia, Sony Music, Universal Music, Zhara Music label, among others. Music companies expect the technology to …

Close to 30,000 votes were recorded on the blockchain during the Russian parliamentary elections in what appears to have been the biggest case of blockchain-based voting yet. The blockchain component of the online voting platform was built by Waves Enterprise. The voting concluded early yesterday, and according to the chief product officer of Waves Enterprise, Artem Kalikhov, everything went off without any hiccups. He told Cointelegraph that the elections took place on the permissioned network run by Rostelecom. The firm was contracted by Russia’s Central Election Commission, which, in turn, subcontracted Waves Enterprise to build the blockchain part of the …

A subsidiary of Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, has joined a blockchain-based platform for commodity trade finance. Sberbank Switzerland AG has signed an agreement with Swiss trade finance platform Komgo to apply its blockchain-powered trade finance service. Representatives from Sberbank Switzerland told Cointelegraph that the collaboration with Komgo addresses the growing digitization of trade finance. Evgeny Kravchenko, head of trade finance at Sberbank, outlined that commodity trade finance is a strategic business of Sberbank Switzerland. According to the executive, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States countries are the company’s key markets, while Sberbank Switzerland also supports trade flows globally. “In …

Blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis has found that darknet markets exert a disproportionate presence in Eastern Europe’s crypto sector. In an excerpt from Chainalysis’ 2020 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report, the firm asserts that Eastern Europe is responsible for “more global darknet market activity than any other region,” with the anonymous free market Hydra comprising the region’s sixth-largest crypto service. Regional shares of global darknet market transfer volume: Chainalysis The report estimates that Hydra generated more than $1.2 billion in crypto revenue between June 2019 and July 2020. The platform is among the world’s largest darknet marketplaces despite solely servicing the Eastern …

Graphic cards’ sales in Russia are surging amid an increase in remote work as well as the apparent growth in cryptocurrency mining, a new report says. According to several local retailers like Citilink and Svyaznoy, crypto mining-related sales of graphic cards in Russia notably surged in August 2020, Kommersant reported on Sept. 14. Alexey Rusakov, an executive at local tech distributor Citilink, told Kommersant that sales from mining-enabled graphic cards have spiked 49% in August. This comes in line with a two-fold increase in sales by tech giant Nvidia on a year-on-year basis, according to Irina Shekhovtsova, communications director of …

Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor’s note One of the most persistent myths about Bitcoin is its supposed anonymity. More properly termed pseudonymity, BTC wallets are permanently tied to their public keys. Most of you know that. But it took government investigators years of trying to corral Bitcoin transactions on dark web marketplaces like the Silk Road to figure that out. Now, however, blockchain analysis is a growing industry, catering to a range of clients including many of the most shadowy of government agencies. This was …

Russia’s new cryptocurrency-related law, “On Digital Financial Assets,” or DFA, seems to have had little impact on the local cryptocurrency industry so far. In its current form, the DFA law essentially provides legal status to digital assets like Bitcoin (BTC), but prohibits their use for payments in Russia. As the DFA law is poised to be officially adopted in less than four months, Cointelegraph talked to major crypto firms operating in Russia to get their take on how the new law can impact their business. Based on comments from executives at companies like Binance, Waves, Paxful, LocalBitcoins, and Wirex, companies …