Russia, one of the few countries where China and India have a limited crypto trade, sees an increase in demand for over-the-counter (OTC) investment in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency assets.
According to local reports, the daily trading volume of large crypto-coins such as Bitcoin and Ethereum in Moscow only reaches 50 million dollars on busy days. This is relatively small compared to large crypto-currency exchanges, but it is big because of regulatory uncertainty in Russia.
At this time, investment in cryptocurrency is not illegal according to local law. As cryptocurrency markets are regarded as property, so long as the capital invested in the cryptocurrency market comes from a legitimate source, the citizens of Russia and their inhabitants are technically legal to hold their cryptocurrency.
Speaking to Bitcoin.com, Aleksei Karpenko:
“There is a common rule. If certain transactions are prohibited, they are allowed. It’s a deal between a buyer and a seller. “
Table of Contents
Regulatory Suspense
Nevertheless, Russia continued to remain stagnant in the growth of the crypto market due to lack of regulatory frameworks and policies. Although it is legal for residents to invest in the market, it remains unclear whether companies will be allowed to operate crypto trading platforms.
Priorities have drafted three laws around the Russian government, cryptographic currencies and cryptography-related businesses, dealing with the lawfulness of foreign exchange operators and cryptocurrency trading. However, until approval of the three bills is delayed until the end of 2018, and the government will certainly not see the emergence of the regulated crypto currency change until the government has confirmed that businesses operate as cryptographic currency exchange.
Local OTC platforms based on global crypto stock exchanges, based on Russia’s liquidity of cryptocurrency market, charge between 1.5 and 2 per cent commission rates and generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in daily profits despite 20 active daily investors.
China Sees Similar Tendency!
China, unlike Russia, has absolutely forbidden cryptocurrency trading. For this reason, it is not legal for local residents and citizens to buy or keep crypto coin.
However, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, China’s activity in the cryptocurrency exchange market remained active despite the government’s recent efforts to remove links between the FinTech platforms such as Alipay and OTC platforms on the mainland.
Financial authorities in China have made it difficult for investors in the country to allocate assets in the yuan to digital assets. With the Hong Kong banking company bank accounts, investors were still able to invest in large amounts in the cryptocurrency.
Hong Kong based Digital Asset Exchange Manager Teride T. Tsang said;
“The latest warning and potentially increased monitoring of foreign platforms is targeted at a batch of smaller exchanges that had claimed to be foreign entities, but are in fact operating in China claiming they have outsourced their operations to a Chinese company”
Even in areas like China, it has been difficult to completely ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies because of the availability of off-shore markets that offer services to government cryptocurrency investors.
Analysts expect that the activities of the cryptocurrency investor regions, such as India, China and Russia, will continue to increase over the coming years, regardless of the circumstances of the policies in the three countries.
