Bitcoin promotes financial freedom and hence campaign contributions using crypto assets are getting more and more mainstream. Amidst the bull season, the crypto-asset is back in a global spotlight. In the latest news, Russian opposition leader and jailed Kremlin critic, Alexei Navalny’s campaign has so far received 658.609 BTC since 2016.
Donations in Bitcoin has helped to make it harder for the country’s intelligence services to track and disrupt its funding against current President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny’s anti-Kremlin movement has accepted donations in the crypto-asset for over four years through its network of regional political headquarters. This year alone, Navalny’s campaign was funded with Bitcoin donations worth $300,000.
With this, donation figures have far exceeded the total amount that was paid in BTC in the year 2020 at the prices at the time.
Back in January this year, Navalny made headlines after he returned to Russia for the first time since being poisoned in Siberia last summer. Following which, he was arrested and slapped with a nearly three-year jail term in a case which he alleges to be” politically-motivated”.
Bitcoin and Russia
Russia has adopted its cryptocurrency law on the 1st of January. As part of the country’s law ‘On Digital Financial Assets,’ [DFA], a decree signed by President Putin on the 10th of December was adopted.
This decree stated how local officials should essentially deal with their cryptocurrency holdings. In short, it obliged two legal initiatives. First which require the country’s public officials to declare their as well as those of their spouse and children’s funds.
Another regulation exists that prohibits certain Russian officials from owning any cryptocurrency, at all. Last December, the the country’s Ministry of Labour and Social Protection published an informational letter reminding some officials that they are obligated to liquidate their digital assets by the 1st of April, regardless of the country of issuance.