One of the biggest Bitcoin critics, Russian official Anatoly Aksakov
said he wanted to buy Bitcoin before the ban but the price was too high.
Anatoly Aksakov, a member of the Russia’s State Duma and a key
spokesman for the country’s cryptocurrency legislation process, claimed
that he has never owned any Bitcoin (BTC).
Aksakov said that he doesn’t hold any Bitcoin and likely won't, as the government has prohibited officials from purchasing crypto, local news agency TASS reports Thursday.
The
official went on to say that he was willing to buy some Bitcoin as an
investment before the ban came into force last year. However, he thought
that the price was too high at the time:
“I wanted to
buy only in order to accumulate. But Bitcoin had already surged too
much, and I was upset about spending money. If it had cost 100 rubles, I
would have bought it.”
In the interview, Aksakov also
argued that Bitcoin should not be available to unqualified investors due
to its extreme volatility. He also touched upon the development of
Russia’s crypto tax regime, noting that crypto tax reports are currently
made on a voluntary basis as a draft bill that would make reporting
mandatory has only passed its first reading in parliament.
Aksakov
is a major financial official in Russia who serves as chairman of the
Russian State Duma Committee on Financial Markets as well as a member of
the Bank of Russia’s National Banking Council. Aksakov has emerged as a
major Bitcoin critic, predicting last year that BTC had no future.
Aksakov’s remarks come shortly after another regulatory initiative suggested to partially lift the country’s ban on crypto payments in late May. The country officially enforced the ban in January as part of its major cryptocurrency law, “On Digital Financial Assets.”
source link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/russian-bitcoin-critic-says-he-would-have-bought-btc-for-100-rubles
