Only a year ago Russias Finance Ministry was threatening jail time to anyone using digital currencies.
In a major U-turn, its now edging closer to their acceptance as a legitimate financial instrument to open a new line of attack on money laundering.
The authorities hope to recognize bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in 2018 as they seek to enforce rules against illegal transfers, Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev said in an interview. The central bank is developing a joint position together with the government on digital currencies, according to its press service.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-10/russia-caves-in-on-bitcoin-to-open-new-front-on-money-laundering
I'm not sure If I should be happy or sad since they are planning to Legalize bitcoin but in the same time, tracking transactions. I'm not entirely sure on how they plan to do it though and how It could be possible unless they are planning to run their own exchanges. I believe that Russians will need TumbleBit whenever this will happen.
Very interesting. I would have expected that another country than Russia would do this first, like China. As we all know China has already got some ridiculous rules on withdrawal and deposits on exchanges, you have to show your proof of funds, where it came from and whether or not it was legally obtained before you can even withdraw any bitcoin or CNY from Huobi, BTCChina, etc.
It would be a challenge for them to track EVERY transaction though.
There would be a lot more transactions to track in 2018 than this year, not to mention that the amount of transactions are already pretty high this year. And to link each transaction to a person's name is just improbable if not impossible to do, especially if people know that they are being tracked and they use coin mixing services such as Bitmixer.io or BitBlender to anonymise their coins to another level.