The City Court of St. Petersburg, Russia has overturned the District Court’s previous decision to block crypto media website Bitcoininfo.ru, local news outlet TASS reports June 4. The District Court’s judgement was handed down in July 2016 in compliance with a ban on crypto-related information sources, as digital currencies like Bitcoin (BTC) were not legal in country. As TASS reports, the new decision was enacted after the Supreme Court of Russia referred the case for consideration to the St. Petersburg City Court, following a complaint action from the owner of Bitcoininfo. “The St. Petersburg City Court overturned the District Court’s …

The Central Bank of Russia released a report May 30, stating that crypto assets do not currently threaten global financial stability as the global volume of crypto transactions is very low. The research paper states that instead of the term “cryptocurrency,” the Financial Stability Board proposes to use the term “crypto asset,” which can be considered a financial asset based on the application of cryptography and distributed ledger technology. According to the report, crypto assets do not pose a risk to global financial stability, because at present the volume of crypto asset transactions is very low compared to the scale …

A major benefit of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is the ability to send funds across the world far quicker than through conventional methods. This allows people to bypass traditional foreign exchanges and international bank transfers, that can takes days or weeks to process the transfer of funds between countries. It also offers a solution to millions of people that live in countries that are affected by international sanctions. The likes of Iran have had to endure the consequences of economic isolation for years, which affects the day to day lives of its citizens. In 2015, Iran had economic sanctions lifted after …

In 2017, 1,090 decentralized applications (DApps) and more than 700 tokens have been deployed on the Ethereum (ETH) network, Finance Magnates reports May 28. According to Christian Crowley, business analyst of Etherium analytics firm Alethio, an average of around 100,000 new users join Ethereum ecosystem every day. Moreover, Ethereum network processes one million transactions daily, Crowley claimed speaking May 28 at ‘ConsenSys Community Day’ that seeks to promote ETH development in Israel. As per Crowley, there are 29.2 mln unique ETH addresses at the moment. Vanessa Grellet, executive director of ConsenSys, a New York-based Ethereum software company, provided a positive …

First Deputy Governor of the Russian Central Bank Olga Skorobogatova has said that blockchain technology is not yet “mature” enough for industrial-scale use, local media outlet Prime reports today, May 26. During a discussion at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Skorobogatova suggested that the emerging technology still requires improvements. According to her, the technology has not yet been applied on an industrial scale, except for its use for cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. The Deputy Governor focused on security and scalability as key issues that still need to be resolved before industrial scale implementation can take off. Skorobogatova divided blockchain …

Russian bank Sberbank CIB and the National Settlement Depository (NRD) will pilot the country’s first official Initial Coin Offering (ICO) using the Bank of Russia’s regulatory sandbox, ForkLog reports today, May 24. Sberbank CIB, the investment banking arm of major state-owned bank Sberbank, and NRD, which is part of the Moscow Stock Exchange Group, are now finalizing plans with the central bank to launch the project by the end of summer 2018. Sberbank CIB’s head Igor Bulantsev said that the bank considers the Russian ICO market to be “highly promising,” emphasizing that many of the bank’s clients “are interested in …

Russia’s parliament the State Duma approved the first reading of new laws regulating the crypto industry Tuesday, May 22. The laws define cryptocurrencies and tokens as property, and lay out specifications for interacting with crypto and blockchain-related technologies. The bill, “On Digital Financial Assets,” which has been under consideration since last year with a final deadline due July 1, deals with cryptocurrencies, as well as blockchain-related technologies such as smart contracts, mining, and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). “These specifications determine that both cryptocurrency and tokens constitute property, identifying key differences between cryptocurrency and tokens on the basis that there is …

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. As society starts to move away from cash, central banks’ potential to reap profits off issuing that cash could be threatened. Many governments are worried about the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies and hence are considering the merits of creating a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Central banks have woken up to the risks cryptocurrencies can pose to policy makers’ bread-and-butter business: the economy. Hence the debate about the pros and cons of government digital currency closed private blockchains versus …

Iran and Russia could start using cryptocurrencies to avoid Western sanctions, Russian news portal RBC reported yesterday, May 17. Mohammad Reza Pourebrahimi, the head of the Iranian Parliamentary Commission for Economic Affairs, referred to cryptocurrencies as a promising way for both countries to avoid US dollar transactions, as well as a possible replacement of the SWIFT interbank payment system. At a meeting with Dmitry Mezentsev, the Chair of the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy, Pourebrahimi said that they have “engaged the Central Bank of Iran to start developing proposals for the use of cryptocurrency.” Pourebrahimi added that he discussed …

European leaders seem to have finally come to a consensus that the innovative technology underlying crypto-assets “has the potential to improve efficiency and inclusiveness of the financial system and economy more broadly,” as emphasized at the G20 summit in Argentina in March 2018. However, when it comes to regulation, the lack of consensus among global leaders made it impossible to enact broad legislation. Various European representatives pushed for coordinated legislation to restrict cryptocurrencies during the G20 summit with no success. Instead, there was agreement to set a July 2018 deadline for regulatory proposals. The hang-up over regulation may be due …

The Supreme Court of Russia has ordered the St. Petersburg City Court to consider an appeal to the ban of a cryptocurrency information website, Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI) reported April 20. In summer 2016, the Vyborgsky District Court of St. Petersburg granted the application of the Prosecution Office and blocked Bitcoininfo.ru website. The court found that information on the website about digital currency Bitcoin, which represents a “virtual payment instrument and a store of value”, to violate the Federal Act “On the Central Bank of the Russian Federation (the Bank of Russia)”. In July 2017, the Oktyabrsky District Court …

A Russian official has refuted claims that Venezuela offered to repay its debts in its newly-launched Petro cryptocurrency, Reuters reports today, March 27. As Reuters reports, Konstantin Vyshkovsky, head of the Russian finance ministry’s state debt department, told reporters that no cryptocurrency-based debt repayments were on the horizon. The update came a week after Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro announced that the Russian ruble would be one of the handful of fiat currencies freely convertible with Petro. The others are the Chinese yuan, Turkish lira and the euro. “Starting March 23, all legal and physical entities will be able to purchase …