The Central Bank of Russia has added another entity to its register of authorized issuers of digital financial assets. The platform, dubbed ‘Masterchain’, becomes the fifth ‘information systems operator’ in the country that can legally tokenize traditional assets and organize their trade.
Number of licensed digital asset issuers in Russia grows to five
The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) has included the Distributed Registry Systems company, with its Masterchain platform, in the registry of information system operators that can be used to issue digital financial assets (DFAs), reported the business news portal RBC.
So far, four other issuers have been registered. These are the tokenization service Atomyze, the fintech company Lighthouse, as well as Sberbank and Alfa-Bank, the largest state and private bank in the Russian Federation, respectively.
Established in April 2021, Distributed Registry Systems is an IT company specializing in developing blockchain-based solutions for the financial, transportation, logistics, and other industries. Several large Russian banks, the Moscow Stock Exchange and the “Fintech” Association are among its founders.
Initially, the company plans to issue digital financial assets for rights to monetary claims, either in the form of bonds that are not tied to specific assets, or as structural instruments tied to various assets, a press release detailed.
Other DFA types will be released on your platform in the future. Earlier this month, Moscow Credit Bank, Russia’s largest private regional bank, announced that it used Masterchain to issue Russia’s first digital bank guarantee in Chinese yuan.
DFAs, digital assets that have an issuing entity, were regulated in Russia with the law “On Digital Financial Assets” that came into force in January 2021.
In February this year, the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, adopted a bill on first reading that will allow financial platform operators to develop and manage blockchain platforms.
Russia has yet to regulate decentralized cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Amid Western sanctions imposed by the invasion of Ukraine, including financial restrictions, support has increased in Moscow to legalize at least some crypto operations, in cross-border payments, for example.
Do you think Russia will continue to expand its market for digital financial assets? Share your expectations in the comments section below.
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