Do they have a new source for this? It reads remarkably like the single story posted yesterday which someone suggested could be the result of speculators spreading misinformation through hackery or otherwise.
Conflicting information on whether individuals can still trade in bitcoin legally. If so, this would leave Russia in pretty much the same boat as China.
What they might do at some point, is prohibit selling goods for bc, this is possible.
Mining / exchanging and buying outside of the country, or buying virtual goods will not go anywhere for sure :)
Again, another Orwellian-themed fake news about my place (or am I getting paranoid?)
UPD: just read the article at http://genproc.gov.ru/smi/news/genproc/news-86432/ -- yep, no new laws, nothing -- "measures will be taken to prevent fraud, etc."
The overall impression is, they are going (a some point, not now) to explicitly delegitimize cryptocurrencies as a means to make payments officialy, but not ban / outlaw using the mining tools, or exchanging the bitcoins.
Lots of Americans in HN make lots of comments defending the US government and the US point of view. Actually the American point of the view (not just in politics: in life, about startups, society, etc) is the constant undertone on everything written here.
Just because to somebody, as an American, when he champions such things it feels to him like he is stating the "natural law" (instead of man made ethics and opinions) doesn't change that fact.
What they _might_ do at some point is in fact allow trading bitcoin itself just like China. They declare that they are concerned "protecting interests of users of cryptocurrencies", so there is hope.