Russian law enforcement authorities have made their first cryptocurrency-related arrests, detaining three people on suspicion of illegally trading RUB500mn or around $9mn worth of bitcoin, Vedomosti daily reported on September 1.

Cryptocurrencies have been high up in the Russian headlines with the Moscow Exchange (MOEX) joining the growing Russian blockchain craze and preparing infrastructure for a cryptocurrency trading platform.

In the meantime, fintech in general, and blockchain technology in particular, has drawn increased attention from the Russian authorities as a promising development field. 

Now the authorities need to face up to the grey zone of enforcement in the field. The arrests were made as the suspects now charged with illegal banking apparently cashed millions in bitcoin.

The suspicious activity was tracked on over 300 credit cards and sim cards used to store the cryptocurrency. Currently there is no legally defined way of cashing cryptocurrencies into rubles.

Recently, Russia’s Federal Agency for Technical Regulation and Metrology (Rosstandart) appointed a new technical committee to work on the standardisation of “the software and hardware of distributed register and Blockchain technologies".

In the meantime Russia's finance ministry remains sceptical over the widespread and unregulated trading of crytocurrencies.

"There is an opinion that cryptocurrenies, such as bitcoin, are financial pyramids," Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev argued, seeing cryptoassets as part of high-risk investing.