Russia Discloses Proposed ICO Regulations

Russia is putting in all efforts on preparing regulations of blockchain technology and Initial Coin Offerings, rather than putting a ban on ICO’s, as the world’s biggest country by territory looks to leverage from the ever growing popularity of ICO’s.

More interestingly, Russia is positioning its national currency, the Ruble, to play an integral part in the ICO process. 

Russia’s MinComSvyaz has prepared regulations for these initial coin offerings, according to local news source Kommersant, publishing the document (in Russian), which is currently in the public discussion stage.

Some of the most notable points in the document are:

• ICO organizers would be accredited for a period of 5 years;
• Accreditation is proposed to be voluntary and controlled by MinComSvyaz;
• ICO’s must be registered in the Russian Federation;
• Registered capital must be at least 100 million rubles (1.7 mill USD);
• Must be licensed to develop, produce, and distribute cryptographic commodities;
• Must have Russian bank account for transmitting money raised from ICO;
• Issuing of digital tokens must be carried out in rubles only (cashless settlement)

 ICO organizers would be required to support buy-backs from investors at the nominal price using the money raised from the token sale.

Lastly, these regulations must be enforced by the given licensed companies, accredited by MinComSvyaz. These digital tokens are considered to be entries in “distributed information systems” created using “cryptographic algorithms.”

Some experts have also clearly warned that such measures could scare away startups from holding ICO’s in the country, though no actual ICOs have been formally held in Russia to date.

However,  Head of Investments at TMT Investments, Artyom Inutin said that documents often leave room for double interpretation and this could hurt the ICO process. To start with there’s no information about pre-handling of ICO’s.

On the same issue,Arseniy Sheltsin, head of Russia’s Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain (RACIB), said,

“It’s hard to comment on these regulations in any shape or form, because they are disconnected from reality. The document uses inaccurate terminology, which can result in conflict. Nor does it correspond to existing regulations.”

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