Crypto businesses are not sure how to react to the new regulations in the Russian Federation.
The new cryptocurrency-related law of Russia, DFA, or ‘On Digital Financials Assets,’ seems to have had little impact on the local cryptocurrency industry so far.
In its current form, the ‘On Digital Financial Assets’ provides legal status to digital assets like BTC (Bitcoin). Nevertheless, it prohibits their use for payments in Russia.
DFA law will be officially adopted in less than four months. Thus, Cointelegraph talked to major crypto firms that operate in Russia. It is to get their take on how the new law can impact their business.
Based on comments from executives at companies like Wirex, LocalBitcoins, Paxful, Waves, and Binance, companies are not precisely scrambling to adopt the new law. It is mainly because of its ambiguous language.
Anton Kozlov works at Paxful. He is head of the Russian market there. Thus, Kozlov said that DFA law caused a lot of confusion. Moreover, he added that, unfortunately, they could not stay with certainty that the new law is clear to the industry.
Russian Market
Moreover, Kozlov added that the full impact of the new legislation ‘is not entirely understood by the industry players.
There is an apparent regulatory uncertainty associated with the law. Thus, Paxful does not expect it to affect its business. It is because payments are not the core service on the platform.
Most of the people on the platform of Paxful are exchanging cryptocurrency. Moreover, they look for arbitrage opportunities in the market.
This year, the Paxful platform saw a massive spike of interest from Russian users. According to Paxful data, the platform’s crypto P2P (peer-to-peer) trading in Russia surged as high as 350% on a year-over-year basis. The main reason for this is the weak status of Russia’s national currency. The Russian ruble is not an attractive saving option.
