Cafe at Russia's largest state-owned bank headquarters accepts bitcoins





While Russian authorities are still trying to define the legal status of bitcoin, the virtual currency has found use in Moscow in the lobby of the country’s biggest bank. A coffee stand at the headquarters of state-owned Sberbank PJSC is one of the first Moscow vendors to take bitcoin, allowing clients to buy espresso and croissants with the cryptocurrency even as some Russian regulators threaten to ban its use.



Russia is late to the bitcoin party, still debating its legality even as one of the people who helped popularize the once-trendy digital currency globally says the software that it relies on is too rigid to gain wide adoption.



The Bank of Russia equated bitcoins to a financial pyramid in 2014, while the Finance Ministry this year drafted a law that threatened fines and imprisonment of up to seven years for anyone using cryptocurrencies.