Well, that’s a bummer. The world’s hottest cryptocurrency has been outlawed in Russia as well as other cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin and Litecoin.

Russia’s Prosecutor General Office came to this conclusion after meeting with the Central Bank, FSB and the Interior Ministy.

“The monitoring of the use of virtual currencies shows an increasing interest in them, including for the purpose of money laundering, profit obtained through illegal means. Russia’s official currency is the ruble. The introduction of other types of currencies and the issue of money surrogates are banned,” – Prosecutor General Office of Russia

With the above statement, Russia has effectively outlawed the use of any cryptocurrecy in the country. How they will enforce that is another matter entirely. The anonymous nature of the currencies themselves make tracking transactions difficult, yet not impossible.

Watch: Man Shoots iPhone 4S After Apple Bans Bitcoin App

It will be interesting to see how the Russian government enforces this law, and how other countries around the globe respond to the growth and proliferation of cryptocurrencies. While banks hate the idea of an unregulated currency, many U.S. companies are embracing Bitcoin and pushing to make Bitcoin transactions mainstream.

Bitcoin took a little plunge on Friday, coming in at around $750 a Bitcoin due to the Japanese Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox suspending payouts to its users. Mt.Gox should resume to business as usual on Monday, and claimed the payment delays were due to an overwhelming amount of transactions which have pushed the website’s hardware.

via: RT