A bill has been filed with the State Duma by lawmakers aiming to add the NFTs term to Russian legislation. Draft authors argue that the rights of people who have non-fungible tokens should be protected, as Russians currently deal with NFTs at their own risks.
Russian Deputies propose Amendments Legally Defining Non-Ferrous Weapons
The Duma, the Russian lower house of parliament, has submitted a draft law to include the NFT-tokens term into the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. Vladislav Davankov, and Anton Tkachev are members of the parliamentary group from the liberal New People party.
According to Tass news agency, the bill’s explanatory note states that NFT-tokens are non-fungible tokens for unique digital assets (images and videos) stored in non-fungible data in a distributed ledger (blockchain) system.
Tkachev was quoted by the party’s media service as saying, “We must protect the rights of NFT owner.” Tkachev pointed out that the Russian law does not currently recognize non-fungible tokens and that people continue to use NFT tokens for their own purposes. He elaborated further:
While cryptocurrency has made things easier, an NFT is not a virtual currency, but rather a digital certificate or ownership. This is why we propose to regulate NFTs in the same way as intellectual property.
Although Russian authorities have taken steps to regulate the country’s crypto sector, Russia’s current legislation and upcoming legislation doesn’t explicitly mention NFTs. The term digital financial assets (DFAs), which was introduced in January 2021 by a law, partially covers tokens and cryptocurrencies.
The Ministry of Finance submitted a new bill, “On Digital Currency”, in February. It is expected that it will be approved this year. It was created to address the regulatory gaps remaining in the nation’s laws. While it has been supported by the Moscow federal government, the Central Bank of Russia is still against legalizing cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
