Rumors that Russia might be pondering the possibility of buying Bitcoins as a means of fighting US-imposed economic sanctions have been strongly denied by the Russian authorities, according to local news blog Forklog.
In the past few days, it has been suggested that a Russian economist with ties to the Russian government had said that the country was about to “dump US assets and US dollars and invest hugely” in Bitcoin in order to fight ongoing UN sanctions.
Most of the reports cite Russian economist Vladislav Ginko, who claimed to work with his state government. He took to Twitter to say that he expected USD 10 billion to be the minimum investment by the end of the first quarter of this year out of a total of the country’s USD 470 billion reserves.
Russian official Elina Sidorenko, the chairperson of an interdepartmental working group of the State Duma for managing risks of cryptocurrency turnover, saw no possibility of such a move, neither short or long term. She made the following formal statement:
“Under this statement there is not a bit of common sense, much less ideas that would be considered in government circles. The Russian Federation, like any other country in the world, is simply not ready today to somehow combine its traditional financial system with cryptocurrencies. And to say that in Russia this idea can be implemented in the next at least 30 years is unlikely to be possible.”
Refuting Ginko, who is an economist with the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, she went on to suggest that even if Russia wanted to the country has no mechanisms to facilitate such a move.
Sidorenko pointed out that in her view, “All over the world, a cryptocurrency is considered as a high-risk asset and a similar model, naturally, would not suit anyone.”
Follow BitcoinNews.com on Twitter: @bitcoinnewscom
Telegram Alerts from BitcoinNews.com: https://t.me/bconews
Want to advertise or get published on BitcoinNews.com? – View our Media Kit PDF here.
Image Courtesy: Pixabay
