The State Duma adopted a law banning digital assets as a means of payment

Article Reading Time:
2 minutes.

Deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted in the third, final reading a law banning payment for goods and services with digital financial assets and utilitarian digital rights.

The initiator of the bill is the headState Duma Committee on the Financial Market Anatoly Aksakov, who submitted the document to parliament in June. The committee chairman believes that the adoption of the law will fill a legal void that benefits criminal organizations and will prevent the use of digital financial assets (DFAs) and utilitarian digital rights (DRUs) as a means of payment. Thus, in just one month, the bill passed all approvals and received the status of a federal law.

The law includes operators of electronic platformsto subjects of the national payment system, which must be registered in the register of the Bank of Russia. Token issuers and investment platform operators are instructed to make it impossible for users to independently enter or change records of DFA and DRM when making transactions.

Exchange operators are required to refuse transactions where there are risks of using DFA and DRM as a money surrogate:

“It is prohibited to accept DFA asa means of payment or other consideration for transferred goods, work performed, services provided, as well as another method that allows for payment of goods, work, or services with a digital financial asset.”

The ban can be lifted in cases wherecounter-provision is the thing being transferred (goods, exclusive rights, work or service provided), the right to demand the transfer of which arose initially.

The law will come into force after approval by the Federation Council and the president of the country.

In June, the head of the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market, Anatoly Aksakov, introduced
a bill on punishment for the release of digital assets without the permission of the regulator has been submitted to the lower house of parliament. The bill establishes administrative liability in the form of fines.