Head of Sberbank Herman Gref stated that the bank hopes for the admission of stablecoins for settlements within Russia and is in dialogue with the Bank of Russia on this matter. Gref spoke about this during the "FI Day: AI and Blockchain" conference. He explained that we are talking primarily about ruble tokens, but for use within Russia, not just for foreign economic activity, Interfax reports.
"We dream that our regulation will advance to the point where we are allowed basic transactional functionality with stablecoins. Until this is permitted, everything related to this, except perhaps mining operations, will have this sandbox-like status. We definitely need to exit the sandbox. We are trying to work with the Central Bank in this direction now," said the head of Sberbank.
Nevertheless, the Bank of Russia classifies stablecoins as cryptocurrencies and still excludes their use for settlements within Russia. Speaking at the same conference, the head of the Central Bank's Financial Market Infrastructure Department, Kirill Pronin, stated that the payments sector is already very developed in Russia.
"We are not and are not currently ready to allow the use of stablecoins or digital assets as a means of payment within Russia. It seems to me that our digital payment space is very developed," said Pronin.
Digital financial assets (DFAs) circulate in Russia, which are tokenized versions of real assets issued on a blockchain through operators officially approved by the Bank of Russia. Such operators include Sber, Alfa-Bank, the Atomize and Token platforms, and others. DFA issuers do not use public blockchain networks to issue tokens, but use private blockchains and their own rules for asset digitization.
Some foreign digital rights (FDRs), including stablecoins that meet a number of conditions, may be classified as DFAs. The first FDR classified as a DFA in September was the ruble stablecoin A7A5, issued in Kyrgyzstan. Its use in Russia is possible only for foreign economic activity purposes through the Token platform. In this case, foreign partners will receive tokens in one of the public networks - Tron or Ethereum.
At the conference, Pronin reminded that exporters and importers have thus gained the ability to withdraw tokens issued in Russia to open networks. But he said that the Bank of Russia will consider the possibility of giving banks and token issuers the right to issue digital assets directly in open networks, since the transfer scheme has not been successful.
"Unfortunately, we do not yet see such vigorous activity from market participants to transfer the digital assets issued here in Russia to open networks. Perhaps we all need to think together, together with banks and participants, about not just being able to transfer digital assets to an open blockchain after first issuing them on our platforms, but maybe we should think about issuing them directly in open networks. This will lower operational costs, it will reduce cybersecurity risks because there is no need to build a bridge between platforms," said Pronin.
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