Forbes revealed ways with which the Central Bank intends to stop the purchase of cryptocurrencies by Russians. The regulator and participants in the financial market are discussing several options for banning digital currencies, said the founder of the cryptoproject Joys Andrei Mikhailishin, who collaborated with the Central Bank.
Among the methods in question “overlapping” of investments in digital assets of the Central Bank gives the priority to blocking the card translations of Russians according to certain MCC codes. This is a four-digit code that the Bank assigns the company to which the payment is sent. The code contains information about which services specifies the seller (for example, the code 5411 is obtained by grocery stores).
Crypto exchangers and stock exchanges are usually assigned code 6051. The same set of numbers are “Traffic checks” and money transfers to the casino. The Central Bank may force credit organizations to block operations with such a code, however, to implement this measure, you will need to participate in payment systems such as Visa or MasterCard, which own information about MCC codes. The press service of the Central Bank stated that they began work on the Cryptovaya consultative report, where the details of the regulator plans will be set out.
According to Mikhailishin from Joy, such a step of the regulator is unlikely to be effective to stop investment in cryptocurrency. Investors will be able to easily find a legal workshop, for example, to have a bank account in Belarus or Kazakhstan. The Chairman of the Association of Economic Money Market and Money Transfer Market Translations agree that the method cannot be called effective. From the market will be honest stock, and there will remain gray crypto exchangers – there will be a certificate there will be a certificate, then to exchange it on digital assets. In addition, cryptocreuses can apply the so-called miscoding using other codes for transactions.
In mid-December, it became known that the Central Bank intends to prohibit cryptocurrency in Russia. The regulator sees the risk for the financial stability of the economy in investments in digital assets, since the number of cryptocurrency transactions is growing lightning. After the emergence of this information, the head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina said that the regulator has the necessary levers to implement such a measure.
Forbes sources also said that in the State Duma on December 20, the first meeting of the Working Group on Cryptovaya Regulation was held. At the meeting, the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank Olga Skogobogatova reported that the regulator does not plan to create a draft law on the prohibition cryptocurrency, but performs decisively against their use and intends to prohibit investments in them. Nevertheless, the Central Bank with its tough position at this meeting was in the minority, sources told.
In September, the first deputy chairman of the regulator Sergey Shvetsov said that the Central Bank cooperates with banks so that they slow down payments in favor of cryptocrium. The representative of the regulator also called the cryptocurrency “high-tech financial pyramid”. In October, the regulator also began to study the volume of investments of Russians in cryptocurrencies to create a depositors’ protection strategy, since “many are looking for a light earnings, without understanding the huge risks.”