Vladimir Putin, that notorious perennial director of the post-Soviet world power we call Russia, is moving aggressively on calling for his government to set up cryptocurrency regulations.
A document published that February 27 shows that Putin has ordered the Council of the Federation of Russia and various apparatus of the Russian Parliament to adopt regulation this spring.
“Specifically, the document requires the adoption of federal legislation that aims to develop the digital economy, including regulation of civil-law digital settlements,” Helen Partz wrote last night. “The legislation should also include a regulatory framework for digital financial assets, as well as attract greater financial resources based on digital technologies, the document says.”
In months past, Putin has called for regulations for Bitcoin and other currencies, as well as initial coin offerings.
Meanwhile, Cointelegraph reports that Moscow’s government is considering using blockchain in an electronic voting system, and that related legislation has been submitted to parliament.
“Russia conducted a reportedly successful regional election with 40,000 participants in Saratov Oblast via the blockchain-driven electronic polling system, dubbed Polys, which had been developed by Kaspersky Lab in 2017,” Max Yakubowski reports this morning. “The Moscow City Duma, a local parliament of the Russian capital city, plans to protect the process and results of electronic voting in the upcoming elections through the use of blockchain technology. “
Could cryptocurrency be a new battleground for financial competition between world powers? Could the race to harness the power of cryptocurrencies echo the arms race and space race scenarios of the 1980s?
We’ve seen reports of U.S. leaders in their own ways trying to advance U.S. interests in cryptocurrency innovation – and in developing new regulations “first.”
“Virtual currencies and the underlying blockchain technology has a profound potential to be a driver of economic growth,” said congressmen Darren Soto and Ted Budd last December in unveiling two proposed bipartisan bills, the Virtual Currency Consumer Protection Act of 2018 and The U.S. Virtual Currency Market and Regulatory Competitiveness Act of 2018. “That’s why we must ensure that the United States is at the forefront of protecting consumers and the financial well-being of virtual currency investors, while also promoting an environment of innovation to maximize the potential of these technological advances.”
These types of sentiment are nothing if not common in leadership circles – leaders see power in the coin, and they want to pounce.
We still have competition in the nuclear weapons arena, and in the sphere of space exploration, but the use of cryptocurrencies, which is so essentially global in many ways, could be a new frontier. That’s why many companies are moving in some way, shape or form to accommodate the blockchain and digital crypto currencies built on its platform.
