Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s leading banking institutions, has established its own digital financial asset platform. The project was made possible after Russia’s monetary authority added Alfa-Bank to its roster of digital asset issuers this week.
Russian Alfa Bank has launched “A-Token,” a platform that allows the issuance of digital financial assets (DFA), business news portal RBC quoted its innovation director Denis Dodon as saying. The bank was able to do so after Bank of Russia announced on Thursday that it registered as a DFA issuer.
The authorization makes Alfa-Bank, the country’s largest private bank, the second largest banking institution that can mint digital coins, behind state-owned Sberbank, the largest bank in the Russian Federation in terms of assets.
The list of licensees also includes fintech company Lighthouse in partnership with VTB Bank, and tokenization service Atomyze in partnership with Rosbank. These have issued various digital assets. Sberbank is also preparing to launch a defi platform.
Alfa-Bank plans to issue its own DFA on the new platform, and plans to pilot it at the end of February. It also hopes to make its infrastructure available to other market players. The bank hopes to work with investment firms and private investors, and the A-Tokens will be accessible through its mobile app.
Dodon further explained that the platform will issue two types of financial instruments – DFA, which is equivalent to traditional financial instruments in the form of monetary claims, and brand new investment instruments, including tokenized physical assets such as precious metals.
Alfa-Bank announced in September 2022 its intention to create an infrastructure for DFA. Their issuance in Russia is regulated by the law “On Digital Financial Assets,” which came into force in January 2021. While the legislation primarily targets digital asset owning issuers, Russian authorities have also been working on a legal framework for decentralized cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
Moscow has seen crypto payments as a way to circumvent financial restrictions imposed by the West over the Ukraine war, and a digital ruble is also in the works. Both Alfa-Bank and Sberbank have been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department, and Russian access to crypto assets has been targeted by the European Union.
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Lubomir Tasev
Lubomir Tassev, a tech-savvy Eastern European journalist, loves Hitchens’ quote: “Being a writer is who I am, not what I do.” Beyond cryptocurrencies, blockchain And fintech, international politics and economics are two other sources of inspiration.
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