The debate of future regulation of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general continues to draw conflicting interests and actions among Russian government officials.

In May, the Oktyabrsky District Court of St. Petersburg decided to block websites that post information about bitcoin.

City Court Overturns Ruling

On Tuesday, the city court reversed that decision after hearing an appeal.

The report stated: “The case is sent for a new consideration by another composition of the court”.

The St. Petersburg prosecutor’s office appealed the decision in order to supervise the execution of legal infrastructure “especially regime objects” and acting on behalf of the Russian Federation and an indefinite group of individuals.

In its initial decision, the court of first instance had said the free distribution of “e-currency” results in the use of cryptocurrency in the trading of drugs, weapons, fake documents and other illegal activity. The court went on to say that cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin support the expansion of a so-called shadow economy and cannot be used legally in the Russian Federation.

The debate rages on among Russian officials

At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June, deputy chairman of Russia’s central bank Olga Skorobogatova, said she saw cryptocurrencies as the future and even claimed that it was only a matter of time before countries would begin adopting national digital currencies.

She revealed that the central bank was testing digital currency pilots.

Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev, who spoke about the subject in April 2017, said Russia could recognise and regulate bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies throughout 2018. At the time, this marked a U-turn from the official who had in the past proposed to imprison bitcoiners in the country.

Just a few days later, the Bank of Russia’s Fintech chief Maxim Grigoriev rebuffed these expectations, stating that cryptocurrencies were still under discussion at the time, and that speculating results was premature.

Then, on June 1, head of the bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina said bitcoin would not be considered a currency in the country and that it would be regulated as a “digital asset.” At the time, she said the bank didn’t see that many benefits of introducing cryptocurrencies into the Russian economy, but rather saw doubts and “risks”.

Russia’s attitude toward bitcoin and digital currencies has been filled with ups and downs, partly because the asset was still in the process of being understood at the time, and nobody outside the crypto-world really knew what to make of it.

Last February, Ulmart – which is basically a Russian counterpart of Amazon – attempted to start accepting bitcoin payments but was stopped by the country’s central bank.

While it’s unclear what the Russian government will conclude, it doesn’t look like an outright “ban” on cryptocurrency will be enforced. After all, countries like China that outright banned cryptocurrencies have only dented the decentralised economy, with crypto and Blockchain-related exchanges like OKEX and Huobi having continued to thrive over the past few months, processing a combined $2 billion on a daily basis.