User Димон Дурак

At the International Legal Forum, which took its place May 18-21, in St. Petersburg, Russia,

Russian prime minister Dmitriy Medvedev gave a short speech to legal experts on the Internet of Things, blockchain technology,

and DAOs. 

Although his rhetoric was calm, soft and simple, many Russian cryptocurrency users saw his statements as an omen of a future clampdown.

[…] I would like to focus on the new part of the virtual space which we’ll need to study in detail. I’m talking about e-commerce and electronic transactions. They’re developing so fast that the law isn’t capable of reacting in real time.

User Димон Дурак: “Uh Oh, he offers jurists to solve the blockchain problem — a colossal work. You need to be a genius to implement a third party fee to an automated system. They probably won’t be able to deploy effective tax collection using an ordinary license. It’s time for them to invent something new, and I wish they would not do it in such haste.”

Interestingly, Medvedev points out that autonomous, self-regulating systems lack written laws. It seems the Russian prime minister hasn’t considered that decentralized, autonomous, i.e. self-regulating systems, don’t need additional regulation by design, especially from central governments.

Instead Medvedev told the audience that “if it’s not regulated by the Russian government, it’s not regulated at all,” insinuating that Russia’s political system would address citizen’s interests and protect users better than an Internet-based consensus system.