According to a Thursday press release from Russia’s State Duma, the country’s lower house of parliament, the Russian government may be considering legalizing cryptocurrency mining. Parliamentarian Andrey Lugovoy recommended the formation of a working group to study the matter.
Lugovoy, who is also a deputy head of a committee on security and anti-corruption, said that crypto miners do not pay taxes on their revenues, which he estimated to be over US$2 billion per year.
According to the statement, Lugovoy noted that when regulation is in place, law enforcement organizations often run into a dead-end in determining if crimes are being committed.
Russia has benefited from the outflow of Chinese miners. According to the latest statistics from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Russia was the third-largest mining hub in the world as of the end of August, after the United States and Kazakhstan. Russia contributed 11.2 percent of the world’s Bitcoin hash rate in May, up from 6.8 percent in April.
In July, industry association the Russian Association of Cryptoeconomics, Artificial Intelligence, and Blockchain announced that it was collaborating with government officials to launch a project to attract crypto mining operations to the country, citing Russia’s abundant electricity and cold climate as reasons for the country’s appeal to crypto miners.
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