Russia's Central Bank to label crypto transactions as suspicious

The bank announced it had successfully piloted a platform that allows users to tokenize assets, including equities and currencies, and issue them to investors, according to CoinDesk. Moreover, the director of the CBR’s financial technology department said the bank had now proposed using the platform as a framework in the country’s upcoming cryptocurrency law, which will act as guidance for legitimate businesses wanting to tokenise assets.

However, this coincides with local media reports that the CBR is planning on updating bank guidance on what constitutes criminal activity. According to business news site RBC, both the sale and purchase of cryptocurrencies could be considered suspicious under the new guidance.

Still undergoing in-house assessment, the guidance would ask commercial banks to flag activity and authorises them to block transactions, and even close the accounts, of any clients found to be trading cryptocurrencies.

This news suggests Russia is now trying to create a regulatory distinction between asset tokenisation, which can more seamlessly be integrated into existing financial law, and cryptocurrencies, which cannot be as easily supervised and managed by the authorities, CoinDesk concluded.