Russia to fine illegal crypto mining – penalties up to 2M rubles ($25K) are part of new legislative amendments in progress. The Ministry of Digital Development is already drafting amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses.
Russia’s Crypto Regulation – a Mix of Harsh Prohibitions and a Drive for Innovation
The bill clearly separates liability by category of subject and type of violation.
- For individuals, participation in mining without meeting the established requirements will result in a fine of 100,000 to 200,000 rubles and the confiscation of the mined tokens.
- Individual entrepreneurs and officials face fines of 200,000 – 400,000 rubles for the same actions, while companies face penalties ranging from 1 million to 2 million rubles.
- The same fine-scale applies to the illegal activity of mining infrastructure operators – equipment owners who provide services to miners and must be included in a special register.
A separate offense concerns the failure to submit data to Rosfinmonitoring on mined digital assets and address identifiers: the same fine ranges apply to individual entrepreneurs, officials, and legal entities if reporting is missing.
Penalties will also affect the field of settlements. Any use of digital currency as a means of payment outside experimental legal regimes will entail fines of 100,000 – 200,000 rubles for citizens, 200,000 – 400,000 rubles for officials, and 700,000 – 1 million rubles for organizations. The Bank of Russia emphasizes that confiscation of the illegally used digital currency will be “the most painful” consequence.
Of course, one can say that the Ministry of Digital Development is striving to create a transparent and predictable control system, eliminating the need to apply laws by analogy. This is a fairly common forced practice for immature regulation: classifying violations under related but non-specialized articles, for example, under Art. 7.19 on the unauthorized consumption of electricity.
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However, it cannot be called an unambiguous pro-crypto regulation in the way we see it in the United States. There, much is focused on the end consumer and investor, while in Russia, it is more about international trade and decoupling from the dollar.
Conclusion
Every regulator sees its value in crypto and adapts it accordingly. In Russia, one can trace a strong state interest and noticeably fewer initiatives from the crypto community. We will closely watch what development this will have in the future, or simply observe the outflow of crypto-enthusiasts.
