Russian Central Bank Says ‘Nyet’ To Digital Crypto

The Chief of Russia’s Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina said she doesn’t see any pertinent or obvious reason to create a national digital currency, according to a report by Russian News Agency TASS.

The regulator made the remarks at the Finopolis forum of innovative financial technologies.

“As Russia’s Central Bank, we have been studying this topic and the need to issue a national cryptocurrency is not obvious for us. Not only for technological reasons, but also because it is (difficult) to really estimate what advantages will the national digital currency give, for example, in comparison with existing electronic non-cash payments. There are many risks, and the advantages may not be obvious enough,” she said to an audience that included Fan Yifei, the deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China.

Nabiullina has previously stated that the central bank does not support cryptocurrencies as legitimate, nor does it advocate for their legality. She has said that she sees the promise of blockchain technology, however.

Yifei has said China is not opposed to the idea of a national cryptocurrency, and that it is paramount to form partnerships with other countries when discussing the prospect of developing regulatory standards.

He said that before a currency could be launched, the country would need to conduct studies and see how things go in other countries.

The lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, recently approved a bill on digital financial assets. The bill defined certain assets like cryptocurrency and token, and it also defined a new type of contract that could be completed in an electronic form, called a smart contract. The contract would be completed using digital financial technologies.

Despite its trepidation on crypto, Russia recently joined the Faster Payments System (FPS). FPS aims to enable users to make instant person-to-person (P2P) transfers using personal identifiers like mobile phone numbers, including between two parties who belong to different banks. Later this year, FPS will enable users to make payments to legal entities using QR codes according to the FPS site.