UPD: draft is available Re: Russia want completely ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

Anton Nesterov komachi at openmailbox.org
Sun Oct 5 05:55:31 PDT 2014


Lodewijk andré de la porte wrote:
> That would be a first! Wonder what exactly pushes their buttons. Perhaps
> just that it's a surrogate? Wouldn't surprise me.
Surrogates actually banned since 90s, but nobody knows what money
surrogates is, there was no lawful definition, and as far I remember,
first time it was used in a letters from Bank of Russia and Prosecutor
General which says Bitcoin is surrogates
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/09/us-russia-bitcoin-idUSBREA1806620140209

Funny thing that with such definition they ban anything except ruble,
including money in computer games, some payment systems, etc.

Russian Duma acts crazy last time, they voted for many crazy bills, and
this one will just continue the trend, so there probably no real reason
for ban. Bitcoin is not so popular in Russia, it take a really little
part in drug deals or anything other, but probably they will attempt to
justify the ban with drugs, there is some talks on drugs started last
time, which very overestimated the problem.

> Giving the Bank of Russia censorship rights regarding alternatives is
> pretty pushy, but, soon, "in Russia legal tender is only tender". 
That probably will work like "we google bitcoin and ban first 20 or more
links, repeat every day/week/month", that way it works with drugs or
suicides, they banned many doorways, jokes or even slang terms not
related to any crime (like an article on boosters from EVE Online, in
Russian community it's called "drugs", or latest GitHub ban for an
article which recommends you to commit a suicide with starting WWIII,
using nanomachines from science fiction, making a nuclear bomb from your
own body, etc.) because of that.

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