Bank of Russia Registers Another Digital Asset Issuer – RBC stated that the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) has added Distributed Registry Systems and its Masterchain platform to the register of operators of information systems that can be used to issue digital financial assets (DFAs).
To date, four other issuers have been registered. They include the tokenization service Atomyze, the fintech business Lighthouse, and the largest state-owned and private banks in the Russian Federation, Sberbank and Alfa-Bank, respectively.
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Distributed Registry Solutions was founded in April 2021 as an IT firm specializing in the development of blockchain-based solutions for the financial, transport, and logistics industries, among others. Among its founders are several major Russian banks, the Moscow Stock Exchange, and the “Fintech” Association.
According to a news release, initially the company intends to issue digital financial assets for rights to monetary claims, either in the form of bonds unlinked to specific assets or as structural instruments linked to several assets. On its platform, further forms of DFAs will be introduced in the future.
Moscow Credit Bank, the largest private regional bank in Russia, revealed earlier this month that it had issued the country’s first digital bank guarantee in Chinese yuan using Masterchain. Digital assets with an issuing company were governed in Russia by the “On Digital Financial Assets” law, which took effect in January 2021.
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In February of this year, the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian government, passed a measure in its initial reading that will permit operators of financial platforms to also construct and operate blockchain platforms.
Russia has not yet enacted regulations on decentralized cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. In response to Western sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine, particularly financial limitations, support for legalizing at least some crypto operations, like cross-border transfers, has surged in Moscow.
