The Russian Ministry of Finance submitted to the national government a legislative proposal to regulate cryptocurrencies in the country.

The draft federal law “On Digital Currency” is “aimed at creating a legal market of digital currencies and establishing rules for their circulation and the circle of participants,” the institution reported in an entry on its website.

The legislative proposal also establishes requirements for digital asset exchange platforms and operators in general.

These requirements, which will relate to governance, cover reporting, information storage, internal control and auditing, as well as the risk management system and the amount of own funds.

For this purpose, a special registry of operators will be created and a regulatory body, to be determined by the government, will be in charge of authorizing companies that can carry out such activities. Foreign cryptocurrency platforms will be required to register in Russia in order to obtain a license.

The draft law will also require customers to identify themselves in advance in order to carry out transactions for the purchase and sale of digital currencies.

Deposits and withdrawals of cryptocurrency from the customer to the trader and vice versa will only be possible through banks using a bank account, the proposal says.

For their part, exchanges and banks will have to report any suspicious transactions directly to Rosfinmonitoring, Russia’s Federal Service for Financial Supervision.

In order to protect investors, exchange platforms will be obliged to report on the “high risks associated with the acquisition of digital currencies”.

Customers will also be required to undergo a test before trading cryptocurrencies. Their level on that test will determine the amount they can invest in crypto.

“If they pass the test, citizens can invest in digital currencies up to 600,000 rubles annually [about USD $7,800]. If they fail the test, the investment limit will be capped at 50,000 rubles [USD $600]. Investors and qualified legal entities will be able to conduct transactions without restrictions,” the official document states.

The regulations include other regulations, including requirements for platforms to separate their digital assets from those of clients.

Ministry of Finance will consider Central Bank proposal

The Ministry of Finance indicated that it will consider the Russian Central Bank’s cryptocurrency ban proposal, also the application of sanctions, as long as they do not contradict its own regulatory approach.

The official statement reads:

The proposals received by the Bank of Russia will be taken into account in further work on the draft law to the extent that they do not contradict the approaches of the Russian Ministry of Finance.

The legislative proposal also mentions cryptocurrency mining. According to the document, a legal definition will be created for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining, as well as the legal obligation to “inform the tax authorities” about their activities.

With two months to go before the first round of voting, France’s presidential candidate, Éric Zemmour of the Reconquête political party, presented four proposals that include fiscal reforms for the taxation of digital currencies and NFTs.

The candidate called the burgeoning cryptocurrency space a “sector of the future” and assured that his proposals were meant to boost the ecosystem at the local level.

The politician shared his vision via his Twitter account on Monday, following his visit to the facilities of Ledger, a French firm specializing in cryptocurrency.

“Today I visited Ledger, French leader in cryptoasset security. We must support the cryptocurrency ecosystem, a sector of the future, and here are my proposals:
(1/5)” he said on Twitter.

First, the candidate put forward a tax proposal for cryptocurrencies. He proposed acting on the taxation of cryptocurrencies to encourage their holders to reinvest their capital gains in the “real economy.”

Zemmour also mentioned the growing trend of non fungible tokens (NFTs), and raised a specific tax policy for this sector that focuses on taxing their sale according to their underlying asset; for example, as for the cases of tokenized paintings.

Create an ad hoc tax regime for the taxation of the disposal of NFTs (Non Fungible Token) according to their underlying asset by expressly excluding them from the capital gains regime for digital assets.

He also indicated that he intends to “put an end to the administrative hell for the professionals of the sector” that does not facilitate the distribution of cryptocurrencies by French platforms.

Finally, he expressed his interest in promoting the stablecoins market without waiting for the digital euro project led by the European Central Bank (ECB). In his opinion, the European private sector must take on this development “so as not to leave the monopoly of stablecoins to non-European entities”.

Coinbase, Kraken and Robinhood are participating in the launch of Travel Rule Universal Solution Technology (TRUST), an initiative that seeks to address the anti-money laundering (AML) data sharing requirements recommended by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and prescribed by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

The companies that are initially part of TRUST are: Anchorage, Avanti, Bitgo, bitFlyer, Bittrex, BlockFi , Circle, Coinbase , Fidelity Digital Assets SM, Gemini, Kraken, Paxos, Robinhood, Standard Custody & Trust, Symbridge, Tradestation, Zero Hash and Zodia Custody.

The group of companies announced Wednesday that they have outlined a plan to comply with the new FATF “travel rule,” which requires financial institutions to collect information on the sender (and sometimes the receiver) of transactions worth more than USD $3,000 between financial institutions.

As such, TRUST will enable cryptocurrency exchanges to securely submit the information legally required by the Financial Action Task Force.

The initiative will oblige its members to use end-to-end encryption when sending data to each other and to never store customer information in a way that could be vulnerable to third-party attacks. It also establishes a set of minimum security practices.

In an interview for CoinDesk, Gemini’s chief compliance officer, Elena Hughes, said the group’s compliance framework is based on two main “components”:

“There is the ability to identify who is on the other side of the transfer before initiating it. Secondly, there is no centralized storage of personal data. So we don’t send it through a centralized repository; instead, the information is exchanged bilaterally.”

Hughs added that TRUST’s plan is to expand to other global jurisdictions, as well as add new members.

The group’s goal is also to become an industry standard for compliance with the Travel Rule.

As CoinDesk noted, until now, there has only been one standard agreed upon by the cryptocurrency industry, the Inter-VASP Messaging Standard, known as IVMS 101.

Trust a joint effort

The companies consulted with FinCEN, the U.S. Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit, to develop the proposal, Coinbase attorney Paul Grewal said. The group also partnered with Exiger, a technology platform focused on regulation and financial crime, to drive the compliance protocol.

Grewal also noted that he expects other crypto companies to join in the coming months. The initial listing notes the absence of notable firms such as exchanges Binance and FTX.