Amid ongoing talks on new crypto regulation, the Russian government reportedly estimates that, if the country introduces regulations for the crypto market and imposes a tax on transactions that involve cryptoassets, it could generate as much as RUB 1tn (USD 13.3bn) in revenue for the state budget.
Figures obtained by local news site TheBell.io suggest that such a high estimate could provide a major incentive to Moscow to regulate and tax cryptoassets instead of outright banning them.
An internal analysis prepared for Russian decision-makers and obtained by the news site provides different options for assessing the value of the crypto market. Basing their estimates on data sources from Coinmarketcap.com, its authors put the value of the global crypto market in 2021 at some USD 1.87tn, and Russia’s share in the market at a minimum of 12% which translates to USD 224.4bn.
That said, other analysts employed by the Russian government came up with different fiscal estimates, claiming that the Kremlin could generate between RUB 90bn (USD 1.2bn) and RUB 180bn (USD 2.4bn) per year from taxing crypto exchanges, and a further RUB 606bn (USD 8bn) from taxing Russian taxpayers’ income from crypto investments.
This could inject a total of USD 10.4bn in revenue from levies on the crypto sector into Russia’s budget.