Im surprised it comes from country almost cut off from financial markets. I guess Russia needs a lection first how these countries who control financial markets worldwide can cut them off from worldwide money transfers to understand why decentralized cryptocurrency is the way to go.
There must be a reason for such action from Russia, I remember they were rather positive at the beginning.
I suspect, they either fear that bitcoin is somehow a CIA project (they don't know who controls the hashing power etc), so decided to ban it as a safety precaution. Or they've run some analysis and figured that allowing BTC may cause outflow of money from Russia, which would further damage their economy.
But maybe there's something else.
On the funny side, the Russian propaganda tube, RT, are very positive towards BTC and cryptos (lately defended the dark wallet concept on 'Kaiser Report').
