The St. Petersburg City High Court reversed the decision of the district court to block crypto Website Bitcoininfo.ru in what hopes to be the beginning of positive steps towards crypto acceptance and adaptation.
In the late morning of Monday earlier this week, The Supreme Court of St. Petersburg ordered the district court to reverse its decision to censor bitconinfo.ru 1 of upwards of 100 crypto media sites in Russia that have been censored without appeal since 2016. The reason…the court claimed “that cryptocurrencies do not have certain consumer protections or lend themselves to state control but instead promote the growth of the shadow economy.” Fortunately, the Supreme Court has ordered the lower court to reconsider its position, which is a massive step forward in helping remove the FUD surrounding cryptocurrencies.
Sarkis Darbinyan a spokesperson for the crypto media site stated that the district court had censored their website without warning or any involvement with the site owners and did not receive any requests or orders on what content needed to be altered for the website to be compliant, after the ban was issued. This has been an ongoing trend in Russia and it is unclear whether if or when, other crypto media sites will have their censorship removed.
Like we have seen in many countries in the past few years, Russia is no exception when trying to build a strong foundation for regulations and laws that govern to cryptocurrency. Some of these positive changes have occurred in recent months, such as in April when the executive office of the Russian Government pledged support for a bill that would regulate ICO’s and only a few weeks, State Duma (the lower house of Russian Parliament) passed bill No.424632-7 which establishes legal definitions to cryptocurrency and other related blockchain technologies.