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Putin signs law on introduction of digital ruble in Russia

July 24, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Bank of Russia

Russian citizens will not be forced to use the digital ruble, and use of the CBDC will be a voluntary choice for people to make, the governor of the Bank of Russia said.

Russia is moving forward with its central bank digital currency (CBDC) as President Vladimir Putin signed the digital ruble bill into law on July 24, according to an official government document.

With this approval, the digital ruble law is officially scheduled to take effect from Aug. 1, 2023, with all but one rule ready to be enforced.

Article number three — which includes amendments to several Russian federal laws, including those related to bankruptcy and inheritance — is expected to take effect from August 2024.

The new legislation officially empowers the Russian central bank to launch the first CBDC pilot with real consumers in August. Previously, the government expected to roll out trials in April in collaboration with 13 local banks, including heavyweights like Sberbank.

According to the newly signed law, Russia’s central bank will be the principal operator of the digital ruble infrastructure and will hold responsibility for all the stored assets. The digital ruble is designed to serve as a payment and money transfer method, and does not provide for investment purposes.

The digital ruble is expected to act as the third form of money alongside cash and non-cash rubles. Russian citizens will not be forced to use the CBDC, and the use of the digital ruble will be a voluntary choice left up to individuals to decide, Bank of Russia governor Elvira Nabiullina reportedly declared on July 24. She stated:

“No one is going to force anyone into the digital ruble [...] But we really hope that it will be more convenient and cheaper for both people and businesses, and they will start using it. This is a new opportunity.”

According to Bank of Russia deputy governor Olga Skorobogatova, the government doesn’t expect mass adoption of the digital ruble in Russia before 2025 or even 2027.

The news comes soon after Russia’s State Duma — the country’s lower house of parliament — passed the digital ruble bill in the third and final reading on July 11. The Federation Council subsequently approved the bill on July 19. According to official records, the digital ruble bill was initially registered in December 2022.

*Latest developments in the digital ruble bill. Source: Russia’s legislative activity system*

While quickly progressing with CBDC legislation, Russian lawmakers have continued to postpone the introduction of cryptocurrency regulation, following a series of delays in the past.

In May, State Duma official Anatoly Aksakov promised to pass four bills related to crypto mining, taxation and international settlement crypto. However, the bills do not seem to have progressed much since.

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Coinbase exec uses ChatGPT ‘jailbreak’ to get odds on wild crypto scenarios

May 1, 2023 Coin Telegraph

AI Chatbot

According to ChatGPT, Bitcoin has a 15% chance it will “fade to irrelevancy” with prices down 99.99% by 2035.

A Coinbase executive claims to have discovered a “jailbreak” for artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, allowing it to calculate the probability of bizarre crypto price scenarios.

The crypto exchange’s head of business operations and avid ChatGPT user Conor Grogan shared a screenshot of the results in an April 30 Twitter post — showing that ChatGPT states there be a 15% chance that Bitcoin (BTC) will “fade to irrelevancy” with prices falling over 99.99% by 2035.

Meanwhile, the chatbot assigned a 20% chance for Ethereum (ETH) becoming irrelevant and approaching near-zero price levels by 2035.

ChatGPT was even less confident about Litecoin (LTC) and Dogecoin (DOGE) however, attributing probabilities of 35% and 45% respectively for the coins to go to near zero.

The Coinbase executive concluded that ChatGPT is “generally” a “big fan” of Bitcoin but remains “more skeptical” when it comes to altcoins.

GPT is generally a big fan of Bitcoin; more skeptical of altcoins and their staying power pic.twitter.com/E9sUQ8AVvD
— Conor (@jconorgrogan) April 30, 2023

Prior to the cryptocurrency predictions, Grogan asked ChatGPT to assign odds to several political predictions involving Russian president Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Joe Biden and former U.S. president Donald Trump.

Other predictions were aimed towards the impact of AI on humanity, religion and the existence of aliens.

“Aliens have visited Earth and are being covered up by the government” — one wild prediction read — to which ChatGPT assigned a 10% probability.

I found a jailbreak for GPT I'm calling JAMES

-Predicts the future for ANY topic (even guesses when people might die based on its training set)
-Quantitatively assesses confidence on any topic (including conspiracy theories)
-May help researchers better find bias and align AI? pic.twitter.com/jqTcNbCT2d
— Conor (@jconorgrogan) April 30, 2023

The executive also shared a script of the prompt, which he then fed to ChatGPT to build the tables.

Grogan backed up the preciseness of the results by claiming to tested out the prompt over 100 times:

“I ran this prompt 100 times on a wiped memory GPT 3.5 and 4 and GPT would return very consistent numbers; standard deviation was <10% in most cases, and directionally it was extremely consistent.”

It isn’t the first time the executive experimented with crypto-related issues using ChatGPT.

On March 15. Grogan showed that GPT-4 — the latest iteration of ChatGPT — can spot security vulnerabilities in Ethereum smart contracts and provide an outline to exploit faulty contracts.

Studies carried out by OpenAI — the team behind ChatGPT — have shown GPT-4 to pass high school tests and law school exams with scores ranking in the 90th percentile.

Meanwhile, Italy recently lifted a ban on the AI tool after banning it for one month following a series of privacy concerns that were raised to Italian regulators.

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