The draft law comes in the context of Russia’s inability to use euros and dollars for payments, which is why many of its transactions are being settled in foreign currencies, even though the contracts are in euros and dollars. To alleviate the resulting foreign exchange risk, the country is considering swapping assets or tokenizing precious metals and other assets and using these for settlement.
According to a series of Russian press reports cited by ledgerinsights.com, the law in question would allow both digital financial assets (DFA) and cryptocurrencies to be used only for cross-border payments for exporters.
Official representatives from the Bank of Russia cited by the same source emphasised the law’s role in facilitating the use of digital financial assets for international payments while supporting the creation of a special authorised organisation. In essence, miners would be able to sell through this authorised organisation to foreign economic entities.
In September 2022, the Bank of Russia admitted that cross-border payments in crypto are inevitable in the current geopolitical conditions. Back then, Deputy finance minister Alexei Moiseev took part in an interview with the Russia-24 TV channel and emphasised that the Bank of Russia and the finance ministry expect to legitimise cross-border payments in crypto in the future.
Moiseev talked about the importance of enabling local crypto services in Russia. He also mentioned that some Russians rely on foreign platforms to open a crypto wallet, and it is necessary to support these services in Russia in order to ensure that the involved entities will be supervised by the central bank, being therefore obliged to comply with anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations.
After the interview, the Bank of Russia revealed that is still opposed to legalising crypto payments within the country despite giving the green light to cross-border payments.
As for CBDCs, in February 2023, the Central Bank of Russia revealed its plans to launch a series of tests involving digital rouble transactions between real customers. Russia announced its digital rouble project in October 2020 and completed a prototype of the CDBC platform in December 2021. In September 2022, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation has begun testing the digital rouble platform and completed a cycle of transfers between individual clients.
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