A draft was recently published of the new banking chart of accounts and it shows that digital assets have been included by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), including the digital version of the country’s national fiat.
Financial institutions would be able to provide data in the future about their operations with these digital assets.
Updated banking charts
The Bank of Russia recently released a draft of its banking chart of accounts, which has been updated for the next year.
Beginning in 2023, Russian financial institutions would be required to provide details about new types of transactions, which include their operations with digital financial assets (DFAs).
They have also added the digital ruble, which is the central bank digital currency (CBDC) that is currently under development of the Russian central bank.
The monetary authority has been working on its CBDC for some time and they plan on expanding its testing phase this year.
The bank is hoping that they would be able to conduct a pilot program for making real-value settlements as early as next year.
Meanwhile, authorities in Moscow are also busy regulating decentralized currencies more comprehensively.
The regulations
The current law that exists for digital financial assets (DFAs) in Russia mostly refers to tokens and coins that have an issuer.
However, there is another bill named ‘On Digital Currency’ which is aimed at covering cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, properly.
Since Russia has been subject to sanctions from Western nations due to its military invasion of Ukraine, the country wants to use crypto assets as well as its own digital ruble for the purpose of cross-border settlements.
A single account has been reserved for the digital ruble, while digital financial assets (DFAs) will have to be reflected by banks in several accounts.
These will fall under the section of ‘Acquired Digital Financial Assets’ as well as ‘Issued Digital Assets’.
Digital ruble
Regulators did provide an explanation for establishing just one account for the digital ruble. They highlighted that only transfers involving the digital ruble would be performed by commercial banks.
This is because it will be the Bank of Russia that will be responsible for issuing the digital ruble and it will be stored in its wallets.
As far as credit institutions are concerned, they will function as intermediaries that provide services to organizations and individuals, like carrying out transfers.
The central bank in Russia has accelerated its work on its central bank digital currency project (CBDC) and there are more than a dozen banks that are already participating in the trials it is conducting.
The regulator has also talked about the implementation of the digital ruble for conducting foreign trade transactions.
Meanwhile, other government institutions, such as the Ministry of Finance, also want to make use of crypto assets as a means of payment for cross-border transactions.
This is because they would be a tool for circumventing the sanctions that have been imposed by Western countries.