Russia has taken a fairly negative view of cryptocurrencies for some time. While they haven’t outright banned them, they have done things like blocking the bitcoininfo.ru website because, according to their courts, it broke Russian law about discussing Bitcoin as ‘a means of virtual payment and accumulation.’
The Russian Supreme Court, however, is calling for a review on the ban of this website. If they decide to overrule the lower courts, it could have far-reaching impacts on other websites as well as regulatory opinion on crypto in general.
Russia is just one of many countries that are working on figuring out exactly how they want to handle cryptocurrency. A couple years ago when this website was blocked, crypto was much smaller and less popular. This review by the supreme court may be a good indication that Russia is starting to realize that they can’t just ban crypto and hope that it will become forgotten.
While this case won’t likely provide a lot of information regarding how their regulations will play out long term, it could be an important step in bringing the large Russian market back into the crypto economy. Of course, many in Russia still participated in crypto, but had to be more careful and in some cases, even use proxies to take action.
Looser regulations from Russia will make it possible for millions of smaller investors to join the market. This may still be months, or even years, away, but is looking more and more possible as cases like this are reviewed.
