Nikolay Nikiforov
Nikolay Nikiforov
Russian media are reporting that Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov is saying that Russia will issue its own blockchain currency, dubbed the 'CryptoRuble'.

Nikiferov is Minister of Communications, a powerful post in the Russian Federation, and is in charge of government policy on all things related to the internet.

He was the youngest man ever to become a minister in Russia (the equivalent of a cabinet member), at the age of 29 in 2012. He is now 35. His whole career has been in the internet sector.

Russia is the unchallenged champion in producing the world's best programmers, many of whom work in Silicon Valley, and due to this natural advantage it has a head start on blockchain technologies, which it is embracing at a far faster pace than other governments, seeing them as a way to break away from dependence on the US dollar.

This interest in crypto-currencies is in part blowback from US and EU sanctions, which have had the opposite effect than what the US and EU intended.

Coin Telegraph reports:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially stated that Russia will issue its own 'CryptoRuble' at a closed door meeting in Moscow, according to local news sources. The news broke through Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov.

According to the official, the state issued cryptocurrency cannot be mined and will be issued and controlled and maintained only by the authorities.

The CryptoRubles can be exchanged for regular Rubles at any time, though if the holder is unable to explain where the CryptoRubles came from, a 13 percent tax will be levied.

The same tax will be applied to any earned difference between the price of the purchase of the token and the price of the sale.

Nikiforov said: "I confidently declare that we run CryptoRuble for one simple reason: if we do not, then after 2 months our neighbors in the EurAsEC will."

Embracing and rejecting

While the announcement means that Russia will enter the cryptocurrency world, it is in no way an affirmation or legalization of Bitcoin or any other decentralized cryptocurrency. On the contrary, Putin quite recently called for a complete ban on all cryptocurrencies within Russia.

The statement from Putin seemed apparently to contradict the earlier comments from other ministers who seemed pro-crypto, but only with regulations, as well as Putin's recent meetings with Buterin and others. Now, with the issuance of the CryptoRuble, the apparent contradiction has been made clear.