The Russian Ministry of Finance has drafted a bill to legalise the trading of cryptocurrencies on approved exchanges, according to reports in the Russian media.

"This is about the fact that buying and selling of cryptocurrencies will be somehow standardised. The general idea is that it will be necessary to buy and sell on official exchanges, and as it will be declared, it will be legalised,” commented deputy finance minister Alexei Moiseev.

Pavel Matveev, chief executive of Wirex, a provider of cryptocurrency debit cards, stressed that this was “big news coming out of Russia”.