As Russia prepares to regulate ICOs and cryptocurrencies, Russia’s central bank launched this past April a “regulatory platform” to experiment and implement new financial services and technologies that require legislative changes.
This platform, which involves other state institutions and industry associations, will be used in the near future to test an ICO technology. The first transactions involving tokenized assets are to be completed by the end of summer 2018. The tokens will be issued by Level One, a company that manages Moscow’s biggest commercial lecture hall.
This pilot project is being conducted by Sberbank CIB, Sberbank’s corporate and investment banking business, and National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russia’s central securities depository. The previous will act as the issuance coordinator and anchor investor in tokens while the NSD, as the transaction custodian, will record tokens and carry out settlements related to their issue and circulation.
Through this pilot project, Sberbank CIB and NSD aim to “assess the specifics of these transactions, mitigate associated risks, and get feedback from the Bank of Russia related to improving mechanisms to conduct transactions.”
Sberbank CIB claims that its experience “as a leader in Russia’s investment business will make Russian ICOs more transparent for traditional investors in the future, guaranteeing the high quality of the organization conducting these types of trades.”
Sberbank CIB and NSD intend to involve “a wide circle of their clients” after the ICO legal framework is stabilized with the adoption of new legislation.
“Sberbank CIB considers the Russian ICO market to be very promising. Many Sberbank clients are interested in this type of investment, and we plan to promote this service proactively once the appropriate legislative framework comes into effect; we will be one of the drivers to institutionalize and popularize this type of transaction,” stated Igor Bulantsev, Senior VP of Sberbank and Head of Sberbank CIB.
Eddie Astanin, Chairman of NSD’s Executive Board, said: “National Settlement Depository uses a pragmatic approach with regard to FinTech. Our end goal is to create the foundations for the development of the digital economy in our country, for the emergence of a new type of asset for investors, for ICO ecosystems, and for the circulation of digital assets on the secondary market. In conjunction with market leaders, we are implementing a project to create infrastructure to record digital assets. The existence of this infrastructure is a crucial condition for institutional investors to come to our market.”
