Kelly Robertson
The meteoric rise of Bitcoin has made the entire cryptocurrency space interesting to some of the world’s richest people. Russian billionaires are not immune to this trend; quite the contrary, a few of them — including Roman Abramovich, Aleksandr Frolov and Aleksandr Abramov — are reportedly investing large amounts of money into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
These activities are said to be conducted through the European fund called Blackmoon Crypto, a subsidiary of Blackmoon Financial, which itself intends to establish and maintain the “best framework for tokenized funds around the world.”
What we don’t know is what these guys — cause it’s mostly guys — aim to do with their digital assets. Are they going to hold them for the long haul? Or what? Your guess is good as mine…
One billionaire wants to launch a crypto platform
Unlike other Russian billionaires, Roman Trotsenko doesn’t just want to buy cryptocurrencies; instead, he plans to launch a cryptocurrency exchange platform of its own, as well as a service that could be used for organizing initial coin offerings (ICO).
In an interview with local newspaper, The Bell, Trotsenko said he sees the demand for virtual currencies, and wants to meet this demand with an offering of its own.
“We had an interest in investing only in Bitcoin and we’re developing the infrastructure; we’re not going to move passengers, but rather service them on the ground,” he said.
I guess billionaires know best what other billionaires want. But it won’t be that easy…
Mixed signals from Moscow
The Russian government has a confusion position on how it will handle cryptocurrencies. Officially, they plan to introduce regulations on cryptocurrency mining and ICOs in July 2018.
On the other hand, we have also recently seen (heard) Communications Minister Nikolay Nikiforov claiming that the government will “never” legalize virtual currencies.
Further complicating the thing is the fact that the Russian central bank has launched its digital currency called CryptoRuble, which is intended to enjoy some degree of regulatory freedom.
These mixed signals are not something businesses like, and so Trotsenko has approached Russian President Vladimir Putin in September to raise the issue of regulating and legalizing the cryptocurrency market.
I guess it’s a waiting game now. Not just for Trotsenko, but for other cryptocurrency-based businesses in Russia as well. More to come, obviously…
