Bitcoin in authorized capital of Russian company

For the first time, a contribution in form of cryptocurrency, more specifically Bitcoin, was made to authorized capital of a Russian company.

The Russian company applied twice to the Federal Tax Service (hereinafter referred to as the FTS) in order to register changes in authorized capital. The reason for the changes was initiative of company’s new investor to contribute to authorized capital in virtual currency named Bitcoin. At the first attempt to register the change, FTS refused.

As it is known, authorized capital of a limited liability company consists of par value of shares of its participants. Shares can be in form of money, securities and other property rights. The compulsory condition to contribute to the authorized capital with property is the ability to give it a monetary value. It is notable that recently legislator has included digital rights into the definition of civil rights. Despite the fact, that cryptocurrency is not directly related to digital rights, it is possible to refer it to those.

Thus, in order to re-submit documents to the FTS, Russian company organized an assessment of investor’s electronic wallet in order to evaluate cryptocurrency placed in it. The independent evaluating company also issued methodological explanations for cryptocurrency valuation. It outlines recommendations for preparing reports in order to establish market value of cryptocurrency of an electronic wallet such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, etc.

Also, a delivery and acceptance act of login and password from the electronic wallet was attached along with other documents for submission to FTS. The set of documents was notarized. This time FTS registered the change. To sum up, legal status of cryptocurrency is not currently secured in Russian legislation. But since this case is the first of its kind in Russia, it is likely to become a trigger for expanding the scope of the cryptocurrency implementation.