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We'll Never Legalize Bitcoin, Says Russian Minister (siliconangle.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In yet another backflip worthy of the Moscow Circus, a Russian minister has said that the country will never legalize bitcoin, just seven months after another government minister said it was considering making it legal. Minister of Communications and Mass Media Nikolai Nikiforov made the statement this week, saying that "bitcoin is a foreign project for using blockchain technology, the Russian law will never consider bitcoin as a legal entity in the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation." Recognizing that blockchain technology is separate to bitcoin, Nikiforov went on to say that "I think that it is quite possible to use blockchain technology and the use of various digital tokens." Those tokens may constitute a Russian-issued cryptocurrency. TASS reported that "Russia's Communication Ministry has submitted to the government the document containing technical details related to cryptocurrencies adoption."
..the system games you
Wrong article guys, sorry
the more star systems will slip through your fingers
VPNs, encryption, Tor, the value of the Ruble. Keep trying Russia. It will be interesting to watch it play out.
A few months ago they were considering it. After consideration they decided not to allow it. How is that a "backflip"?
Especially when money is involved.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
They probably can't afford to undermine the value of the Ruble any more than the sanctions imposed by Obama did to it.
That and it's lack of traceability in a state that still loves to monitor everything everyone does.
The soviets lost through economic warfare and Russia today is still taking a hammering on that front.
The day they legalise BTC is probably the day it peaks and nose dives due to interested parties pulling plugs on that route.
1BTC = US$9,385 as I type this in. No oil or gold to back it, just ease of storage and movement and no, or limited, traceability.
If Russia started selling it's oil & gas in BTC today's $9K a coin would soon look like a bargain price.
Moscow "circus"? I'm seriously tired of this anti-Russia propaganda bullshit. I understand our two minutes of hate makes us feel good and let us forget how degenerated our Western democracies have become, but isn't it time to stop and to try to fix our countries instead of seeking a bogeyman?
Oh, and before another idiot say I'm a Rusky, my nickname is my real name and I live in Montreal, Canada.
Snowden showed the conflict between prior public perception of the utility of most internet related communication tools and what the government really thought of their effectiveness. And that was a government with at least half a historical foot in the liberty and free speech game. If I were a russian citizen I sure as hell wouldn't trust my personal safety to tor/vpn/encryption. Maybe those are the kinds of things you use for a Snowden level moment-in-history data transfer to journalists, but definitely nothing I'd feel secure in using day to day. Day to day a government has fair to say plenty of opportunity to work around some relatively minor obstacles. When such a government encounters real obstacles, buildings get burned down, the earth gets salted, etc. If the Russian government doesn't want its citizens using Tor or VPNs or encryption, I'm guessing that's pretty much exactly what is going to happen. The real dissident movements against totalitarianism aren't going to really be using Tor or VPNs for their day to day typical communication needs. Except in so far as to blend in with the crowd they'll use them exactly as much as the average person. In fact they are probably most useful at counterintelligence, i.e. knowing they are not actually secure, and filling those pipes with information they want the authorities to think they are trying to hide.
Changing the official position after several months of study is not a back flip. Seven months ago one minister says they are considering it. That means they were looking into it, not that it was absolutely going to be approved. Now after those months of study and debate they have decided that it will not be adopted.
That's called studying an issue and announcing the conclusions after the study. Not a backflip. A back flip would be minister A saying Bitcoin will be adopted, and then a short time later, Minister B saying that it would never be accepted, without giving any reason for the change in position.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.