The Central Bank of Russia has added another entity to its register of authorized issuers of digital financial assets. The platform, called “Masterchain”, becomes the fifth “information system operator” in the country that can legally tokenize traditional assets and organize their trade.
Number of licensed digital asset issuers in Russia increases to five
The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) has included the company Distributed Registry Systems, with its Masterchain platform, in the register of operators of information systems that can be used to issue digital financial assets (DFA), the portal reported. RBC business news.
Four other transmitters have been registered to date. These include tokenization service Atomyze, fintech company Lighthouse, as well as Sberbank and Alfa-Bank, the largest public and private bank in the Russian Federation, respectively.
Founded in April 2021, Distributed Registry Systems is an IT company specializing in the development of blockchain-based solutions for the finance, 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 not linked to specific assets or as structural instruments linked to various assets, details A press release.
In the future, other types of DFA will be launched on its platform. Earlier this month, Moscow Credit Bank, Russia’s largest private regional bank, announced that it had 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 by the law “On Digital Financial Assets” which entered into force in January 2021.
In February this year, the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, passed a bill in its first reading that will allow operators of financial platforms to also develop and manage blockchain platforms.
Russia has yet to regulate decentralized cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Amid Western sanctions imposed following the invasion of Ukraine, including financial restrictions, support has grown for Moscow to legalize at least some crypto operations, in cross-border payments, for example.
Do you think Russia will continue to develop its market for digital financial assets? Share your expectations in the comments section below.
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