A business leader has said that a soon-to-be-unveiled Russian draft crypto regulation bill – which proposes bringing crypto into a strict regulatory framework – is effectively a way to discourage Russians from using cryptoassets.

According to Lenta, the President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) business pressure group, Alexander Shokhin, claimed that the bill was a “tool” that would help “reduce Russians’ interest in cryptocurrency.”

He added that regulating crypto, coupled with the Central Bank’s plans to introduce a digital ruble, would “remove a number of issues and risks associated with cryptocurrencies.”

While the bill would move crypto out of the grey area it currently occupies in the Russian legal space (tokens are not illegal, but have no legal status), it would make access to coins much more complicated: Russians would be forced to declare their crypto holdings, use only licensed and regulated exchanges that link to domestic bank accounts, and declare all transactions worth over a certain fiat equivalent amount.

They would also be blocked from using overseas trading platforms.

The main architect of Russia’s crypto legislation thus far, Anatoly Aksakov, the State Duma’sChairman of the Committee on Financial Markets, has claimed that the bill – set to be unveiled late next week – will pass before the end of the first half of this year.

If a consensus has indeed been reached among the legislators and regulators charged with forming a national crypto policy, the bill will likely pass unopposed through the Duma, where it will need two readings before it can be published in the official gazette and promulgate.

Per Tass, Aksakov indicated that the document was ready, but needed fine-tuning