The Bank of Russia (the country’s central financial institution) announced that Moscow wholesale markets stimulate crypto-trade in the state. In accordance with the represented data, this way, merchants create shadow schemes. And most of the wholesalers, interestingly, are Chinese.
Entrepreneurs and cyber money experts reacted to the statement of the Russian regulator with fair skepticism, Forbes emphasizes.
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Russia's top financial institution gathers that the wholesale markets in Moscow, e.g., shopping center "Moscow", "Sadovod" and "Food City," "have become pathfinders and leaders in proposing the purchase of cyber assets,” that’s what the director of the Division of Financial Monitoring and Currency Control of the institution Yuri Polupanov said on April 12 at the Thomson Reuters Forum.
As per his words, 90% of the trading operators in these markets are Chinese manufacturers and dealers, RBC conveyed.
Polupanov evaluated that the shadow turnover in these markets constitutes about 600 billion roubles a month. The Russian central bank cannot track the transfer of this money to the accounts of banks, because most of the revenues are used for the purchase of cyber-coins, which are then cashed out in China, the rep of the Bank of Russia said.
"We see the immediate flow of the digital money via e-mail directly to homes of these traders and producers and their conversion into the regional fiat money," Polupanov said.
As Forbes journalists emphasized, the Russian central bank did not respond to their inquiry concerning the literal meaning of Polupanov’s words.
The issue of purchasing crypto assets in the wholesale markets of Moscow became topical after the post by the owner of ICO Bank Mikhail Zhukhovitsky on Facebook from mid-March. In it, it was said that in the market "Moscow" in Lublin, traders were buying bitcoin for "gray" clearing-off.
The author of the post suggested that the clearance of the banking sector made the cost of sending money to China too high, and Chinese entrepreneurs stopped selling cash.
However, Polupanov's statements were taken very skeptically both by people who are related to Moscow wholesale markets and representatives of the critical industry.
"This is complete nonsense!" a person familiar with the functioning of the mentioned markets stated, Forbes reports.
According to person’s words, no Chinese people are working for "Food City," for instance. The insider also added that the cash turnover in the markets exists, but it is not prohibited by Russian laws.
