A draft law submitted to the Russian Parliament also allows operators of platforms providing financial services to operate blockchain platforms. The law will allow them to combine their normal activities in the traditional financial market with the issuance of digital assets.
The new law opens the door to the blockchain space for Russian financial service providers
The State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, adopted in the first instance abillallowing financial marketplaces, as defined by another Russian law, to also serve as blockchain platforms that facilitate the issuance and exchange of digital financial assets (DFA).
The legislative initiative is the work of a group of lawmakers led by Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the Congressional Financial Markets Committee, crypto news outlets Bits.media and RBC Crypto reported. Its main objective is to support the development of tokenized cashless payments, digital rubles, and DFAs.
The latter is regulated by the law “On Digital Financial Assets”, which came into force in January 2021 and mainly covers digital assets with issuers. Transactions with decentralized cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have not yet been legalized in Russia.
The new bill builds on the Law on the Implementation of Financial Transactions Using Financial Platforms, which came into effect in 2020. It describes said financial platforms as information systems that provide financial organizations the opportunity to meet consumers online.
These platforms allow individual investors to access financial products, banking and insurance services, and services offered by companies working in the securities market. The possibility of integrating financial services with blockchain services expands the types of activities its operators can perform and the range of products and services they can offer, the sponsors noted.
Amid Western financial regulations, the Russian government is exploring ways to develop the digital asset market. The Central Bank of Russia has already added several entities to its register of authorized DFA issuers. These are Atomyze, a tokenization service; Lighthouse, a fintech company; and Sberbank, Russia’s largest state-owned bank, and Alfa-Bank, a private bank.
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