Russia’s finance ministry and central bank are reportedly planning to launch a crypto exchange for qualified investors under an experimental legal regime.

The platform will be aimed at “super-qualified investors,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said during a ministry meeting, according to April 23 reports from Russian media group RBC and Russian news agency Interfax.

“Together with the central bank, we will launch a crypto exchange for super-qualified investors. Crypto assets will be legalized, and crypto operations will be brought out of the shadows,” he said in a statement translated from Russian.

“Naturally, this will not happen domestically, but as part of the operations permitted under the experimental legal regime.”

Anton Siluanov (left) said the Kremlin-backed crypto exchange is only for Russian investors who meet certain income and wealth thresholds. Source: Mehmet Simsek

The Russian central bank announced a proposal on March 12 to allow a limited number of Russian investors with a certain amount of assets to buy and sell cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) under a three-year experimental regime.

Under the proposal, the bank created a new investor category, super-qualified investors, defined by wealth and income thresholds of over 100 million rubles ($1.2 million) or a yearly income of at least 50 million rubles ($602,000).

Super-qualified investor definition not set in stone 

The deputy director of the Finance Ministry’s financial policy department, Osman Kabaloev, said the criteria for a super-qualified investor are not yet final because they were floated in the early stages of discussions last year, according to RBC.

“Perhaps it will be in this format, or these indicators will be somehow adjusted in one direction or another – this is possible, I think there will be a wide range of discussions,” Kabaloev said in a statement translated from Russian.

Russia implemented a ban on using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin for payments under its first crypto law, On Digital Financial Assets, which came into force in January 2021.

However, the country has since been trying to make other crypto inroads. On April 16, Kabaloev said the Kremlin should be creating its own stablecoin after a recent freeze on wallets linked to the sanctioned Russian exchange Garantex by US authorities and stablecoin issuer Tether. 

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Meanwhile, Evgeny Masharov, a member of the Russian Civic Chamber, proposed on March 20 to create a Russian government crypto fund that would include assets confiscated from criminal proceedings.

At the same time, other officials were progressing with new legislation on recognizing crypto as property for the purposes of criminal procedure legislation.

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