The Central Bank and financial market participants are considering several options for implementing a ban on the purchase of cryptocurrency in Russia, Andrei Mikhailishin, founder of the Joys crypto project, told Forbes. One of the mechanisms involves blocking card transfers of citizens for specific MCC codes (merchant category code, point of sale type code).
We are talking about four-digit codes that banks assign to companies to whom the payment is made during the operation. MCCs allow you to find out what services the organization provides. Crypto exchanges and exchanges are usually assigned the code 6051, the source explained.
The Central Bank confirmed the existence of such an option, noting that it is being considered “among many others.” Now the regulator is preparing an advisory report on cryptocurrencies, in which it intends to outline its position on this topic.
On December 16, Reuters, citing sources, said that the Central Bank plans to ban investment in cryptocurrencies in Russia, as it sees risks to financial stability in the growing number of such transactions. The next day, the chairman of the regulator Elvira Nabiullina recalled the Central Bank’s “skeptical” attitude to cryptocurrencies and said that the Russian financial infrastructure should not be used for transactions with such assets.
According to the Central Bank, the annual volume of transactions of Russians with cryptocurrency is approximately $ 5 billion. Thus, Russians are one of the most active participants in this market. The regulator believes that transactions with such assets are associated with significant risks to financial stability and investors, because, due to their decentralized nature, cryptocurrencies are used in criminal activities (for money laundering and drug trafficking) and are highly volatile. In addition, mining leads to increased electricity consumption, the Central Bank said.
On September 15, the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank, Shvetsov, said that participants in the Russian banking system would begin to slow down people’s payments to crypto exchanges in order to protect the population from “emotional purchases” of cryptocurrency. In early September, the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov said that the country was not ready, following El Salvador, to recognize bitcoin as the official currency, stressing that such “quasi-currencies and de facto equating them to monetary instruments” can bring the financial and economic systems nothing but harm …
.