Andrey Zubarev, Senior Researcher at the Digital Finance Department of the Gaidar Institute, commented for Nezavisimaya Gazeta on the Russian government’s initiatives to regulate the Russian cryptocurrency market.
The government is considering changes that would impose taxes on income from cryptocurrency transactions and establish a unified regulatory framework for digital assets. However, according to Andrey Zubarev, the current model raises questions regarding the logic behind the use of such instruments.
“The main and key limitation is the inability to withdraw cryptocurrencies to personal (non-custodial) crypto wallets. What is the point of acquiring assets whose main ‘selling point’ is the ability to store them independently and privately if future regulation effectively takes this function away? In that case, the logic behind using cryptocurrencies becomes blurred, and one might as well not introduce separate regulations at all but simply limit oneself to launching crypto-asset-based exchange products on traditional platforms,” noted Andrey Zubarev.