In February of this year, there was a demand from Russian President Vladimir Putin to adopt Cryptocurrency federal laws by July. However, with the deadline just around the corner now, that drive has cooled off with the Prime Minister of the country noting a decline in interest.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has said that the interest in cryptocurrencies has decline substantially and because of this there is less of a need for regulations within the country.

The Russian government has been working on cryptocurrency regulation since the early days of 2018 when Bitcoin and cryptocurrency interest were at their height following a new all time high in December of 2017.

No longer relevant

The Prime Minister’s comments were reported by Russian news agency Fontanka, he said:

“The popularity of cryptocurrencies has decreased so far, which likely makes the regulation issue not that relevant already,” according to Medvedev

Medvedev added that the issue was widely discussed at a forum in May last year when he urged the government to legislate some basic crypto terms. However, the desire to regulate back then was more pressing as the country was deeply involved in the growing space.

Now, with the recent bear market that lasted over 18 months, the interest has died down substantially allowing the Prime Minister to be vindicated in his desire to deprioritize the push for regulation.

A missed opportunity

This view from the Russian Prime Minister seems short sighted and a little cloudy. There is no doubt that the interest in cryptocurrencies have fallen in terms of an investable asset, but there has been sustainable growth and advancement – especially under the blockchain side of things.

While the interest in investing fell through 2018, there was a push for growing the technology and devoid from speculation a number of major companies waded in and handed a lot more legitimacy to cryptocurrencies.

Now, it would be difficult for some one to argue that this is merely a phase and it will be swept under the carpet soon, and thus there will be a need for regulation at some point.

Thus, for Russia to deprioritize regulation now will see them probably fall behind where other countries will look to get ahead of things when the excitement and speculation is now at a lower level.

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