Russians in 2020 earned $ 600 million from cryptocurrency trading, according to a study by the analytical company Chainalysis. Thus, Russia was in fifth place in terms of revenues from cryptocurrency trading, in first place are US cryptoinvestors with earnings of $ 4.1 billion over the past year, in second place are investors from China with earnings of $ 1.1 billion, third place is in Japan with earnings of $ 0.9 billion and the fourth – Great Britain ($ 0.8 billion).
Chainalysis calculated profits based on information on deposits, withdrawals and Internet traffic on cryptocurrency exchanges.
“US investors collectively generated more than $ 4 billion in realized bitcoin profits in 2020, more than 3 times that of China, the next largest country. This may seem surprising given that China has historically had the highest volume of raw cryptocurrency transactions, but as we said earlier, in 2020, US-focused exchanges saw huge inflows that appear to have been realized by the end of the year, which is likely to account for a large profit from trading currencies in the country, ”the statement says.
On January 1 of this year, the law “On digital financial assets” came into force in Russia. It defines cryptocurrency, but prohibits its use in Russia to pay for goods and services. Advertising of payments with digital money also falls under the ban. In November last year, the Ministry of Finance prepared amendments to the Criminal and Criminal Procedure Codes of Russia, which provide for the imprisonment of owners of digital currencies for up to three years if they have not reported to the tax authorities at least twice in three years on transactions with digital currencies in the amount of 45 RUB million and above (equivalent).
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