Mr Putin published five degrees, signed Saturday, on the Kremlin website requiring the government to come up with legal definitions for cryptocurrencies, create a tax on mining them, and a legal procedure for initial coin offerings based on Russian IPO regulation by July next year.

Russia’s central bank is also to create a “sandbox” for cryptocurrency use until the framework is in place and develop a payment system for members of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union.

Communications minister Nikolai Nikiforov indicated last week that Russia would only legalize cryptocurrencies it controlled. “Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are based on foreign cryptography, and there’s no legal basis for them,” he said.

Financial markets megaregulator, Project Group №1