Bitcoin Forum

MOSCOW - Bitcoin is not appropriate for use within the Russian economy since it is based on foreign cryptocurrency algorithms, Russian Communications Minister Nikolay Nikiforov said yesterday, moreover adding the country was capable of designing its own digital currency.

“Bitcoin and Etherium are cryptocurrencies developed on the basis of foreign cryptography. Russia has its own cryptography school. I think we are absolutely capable of creating a cryptographic unit, a tool, based on the blockchain technology, and work out concrete regulations to set the framework for the operations,” Nikiforov told reporters.

The minister warned of “blindly worshipping Bitcoin,” stressing the currency is alien to Russia, as it does not use Russian cryptographic technologies.

Nikiforov gave assurances he would not make any personal investments in Bitcoin.

He said the Russian Ministry of Telecoms had developed proposals on regulating cryptocurrency in Russia.

source: https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/economy/russia-is-not-interested-in-bitcoin-11083071

Bitcoin is not based on Russian math. Russian mathematicians are capable of using their mathematics to create a cryptographic unit.  We don't need decadent Western math.

Mr. Nekiforov has communistic wiev as I see. I think there is nothing in that bitcoin was a creation of some other country. The same way dollars and euro, which are actually used on the territory of Russia, should be stoped. Russia just make a step back in a technological sense and I really doubt their national crypto will be successful.

Why right away communistic point of wiev? I think such practice as making a national crypto currency, let's say Ruscoin, which is going to be used inside the country for transaction for products and producers which created by national firms or work inside the country. It can work and hold the national economy on the healthy level and help to it's raising. Why not?!

Never say never. If Putin wants it to be successful it has a lot of power behind it ..maybe it will be just for national items like banking systems etc....

We have to understand that this is not actually the official stand coming from the government of Russia. Clearly the man is expressing his own views on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency and we have to respect that. Indeed, Bitcoin is not a creation of the Russians so it should be foreign to them but it does not mean that anything foreign may not have anything of value within the country. I am sure that anybody can also bring the dollar into the Russian territory and have them exchanged into the local currencies easily (as long as you don't bring a truckload of foreign money, of course). Bitcoin can be taken like a foreign money along this line of illustration and of course there would be rules and regulations to be followed.

Nobody is restricting any country from introducing its own government-backed cryptocurrency and in fact it would be good to see them issue their own version of Bitcoin...let's see how successful they can be. This is actually the reason why we have so many ICOs right now...the market is open to all but sadly it is also open to many scam artists which is partly a big concerns of many authoritative bodies.

Those russians are so interesting people. Yesterday their politicians said "we will support bitcoin, be have plenty of cheap electricity", today they state "we do not wan`t this western blsht, we may create something ourselves". Bureaucracy, old and hulking.

So, by that logic, Russian government sites should stop using HTTPS protocol as well and they should not use SSL certificates either. Because they are based on public key cryptography which is backed by algorithms such as RSA/SHA256 and so on. None of these cryptographic algorithms were designed by Russians.

This view presented by the Russian government is not something that is supported by Russian mathematicians or hackers themselves. It's just politics.

This should be a good reminder to people who think that Russia is interested in Bitcoin because of dumb news like "Putin to mine Bitcoin with his surplus of electricity and $100 million dollars invested in mines". Russia has always been sending mixed signals about Bitcoin because there's no official position on it, so their officials tend to let themselves speak whatever they want and also Russia prefers to wait and see if it will be able to use Bitcoin to its own advantage - like to circumvent the sanctions, for example.

Agree, this article was exaggerate an opinion from Nikiforof to become a state decision.
I remember the news about a company co-owned Vladimir Putin plans to generate $100 million worth of cryptocurrency to start a large scale bitcoin mining operation in Russia as they want to challenge China for bitcoin mining supremacy.
Russia government could create their own cryptocurrency but bitcoin and ethereum still better than theirs.

Not really.  A lot of famous communists were globalists e.g. Trotsky, and it was generally seen as the final goal of these states.

However, I agree that it sounds awfully authoritarian to disregard a system based on something as trivial as its country of origin.  It's useful to draw ideas from anyone that has them.

It's important that Bitcoin is global - if someone in Russia wants to contribute to Bitcoin, they absolutely can.  In fact, they could even create a fork if their aim is to have something different which attracts the same people as Bitcoin.

I doubt that the Russian government will want to legalize bitcoin. This issue has not been resolved for a long time and it will not be resolved positively.
The government realized that bitcoin could harm the economy of the country

Of course they are not really interested in Bitcoin and any other crypto currency for that matter. They view it as a threat for their government and knowing how they control everything, this is no brainer. That is why I don't believed anything related to crypto that is coming out from Russia. It is always they have opposing views and totally contradicts what the other will say. Even having a mining farm is very doubtful because there was a news lately announcing that they are planning to put up out similar to China because they have a lot of extra supply of electricity. So this news is no surprise to me at all.