- Russia’s regulator may have to block 17 crypto exchanges.
- These exchanges supposedly had illegal material on their websites.
- Lawyers at the Digital Rights Center are working to cancel the court decision.
On September 2, Russia’s Kushnarenkovsky District Court of Bashkortostan prohibited several cryptocurrency exchanges for the information disseminated on certain pages on their websites.
Thus, upon failing to delete these illegal web pages, the country’s regulator — Roskomnadzor, would block them. Roskomnadzor keeps a thorough register of all prohibited sites.
In all cases, the ruling said that these sites were allowing free access without any required registration. Most of these sites enabled users to exchange, transfer, and cash out cryptocurrencies.
This lack of registration meant that users could acquaint themselves with the content. Therefore, they could even copy any material in electronic form. To emphasize, this meant that there was not a single restriction over copying, transferring, or distributing data on these platforms.
To fight the charges, the Digital Rights Center answered the call. The law firm’s Managing Partner — Sarkis Darbinyan said that the prosecutor filed independent administrative lawsuits for each of the accused. He also calls out the prosecutor for its slow adjustment to cryptos.
Apparently, prosecutors do not want to accept the reality that the law on digital assets has already been adopted and the legislator did not follow the path of a complete ban on cryptocurrencies, but only limited the possibilities of its use and civil law turnover.
Russia was one of the first nations to adopt the use of cryptocurrencies. Hence, it constantly works to keep all related entities in check. For instance, in 2019, Roskomnadzor blocked Bestchange.ru multiple times until access to it was finally restored. For now, lawyers from the firm are working on official complaints to seek full cancellation of the court decision.