Bank of Russia to ban mutual funds from investing in Bitcoin

Read the full article by Helen Partz here

Mutual funds in Russia will not be allowed to provide crypto exposure to qualified or unqualified investors.

Key Points:

The central bank of Russia has been known to have strict policies in regards to investing in cryptocurrency, now they are officially banning mutual funds from investing in crypto.

On Monday, the Bank of Russia published an official statement on regulating investment opportunities by mutual investment funds.

Despite expanding the number of assets available for investment by mutual funds, the document prohibits fund managers from buying cryptocurrencies as well as “financial instruments whose value depends on prices of digital assets.”
Artem Deev, head of the analytics department at the brokerage firm AMarkets, reportedly said that Russia has only one industry-related exchange-traded fund (ETF) so far. According to Deev, the fund is managed by the joint-stock management company “BrokerCreditService” and invests in companies focused on decentralized data storage and blockchain, including firms like Jack Dorsey’s Block, PayPal and Broadcom.

As previously reported, the Bank of Russia has taken a hard stance on cryptocurrencies and has barred some big banks from offering crypto investment services. The regulator argued that such services do not “meet the interests of investors and bear great risks.”