A total of over $26 million in digital financial assets (DFA) were issued in Russia last year. This new market was regulated in 2021 and developed the following year when the country’s monetary authority began licensing issuers.
Digital Asset Balances Grow in Russia, Investors Seek Alternatives to Traditional Financial Instruments
In less than a year since operators licensed by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) began issuing digital financial assets, they have issued 2 billion rubles (over $26 million) in DFA. This data was presented by Ekaterina Frolovicheva, general director of the tokenization service Atomyze.
During the roundtable at the “Digital Financial Assets – a new tool to attract liquidity” public chamber, Frolovicheva explained that the first DFA issuer was added to the Bank of Russia’s register on February 3, 2022, but DFA issuance began several months later.
She also stated, as quoted by TASS, that the unique features of DFAs are very attractive and demand is growing. For example, hybrid digital rights combine the characteristics of digital financial assets and meritorious digital rights, proving at the same time а right to demand the transfer of monetary claims and assets.
In the Russian Federation, stable coins and non-financial tokens (NFT) can be issued as hybrid digital rights when they are not intended for settlement purposes; the law “On Digital Financial Assets” that came into force in January 2021 allows this. However, the country has not yet regulated operations with decentralized cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Atomyze is one of the platforms authorized by the CBR to issue DFAs, along with fintech company Lighthouse and Russia’s largest state-owned and private banks Sberbank and Alfa-Bank. Distributed Registry Systems, which operates the blockchain platform Masterchain, was also recently authorized.
Russians will soon be able to invest in DFAs along with other financial instruments such as stocks and bonds, avoiding the risks associated with traditional financial instruments and bypassing financial market intermediaries, commented Maxim Trofimov, CEO of a company called Digital Assets
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