The issuing of receipts for digital financial assets has been recommended for legalization by the Moscow Exchange. According to the trading platform, custodians will now be able to give clients who are not yet ready for distributed ledgers the ability to virtually trade assets. MOEX also intends to obtain a crypto exchange operator license.
The top Russian equity and derivatives market has proposed new laws that would allow depositories to issue receipts for virtual currency (DFAs). In current Russian legislation, the general term “DFAs” refers to digital coins and tokens that have an issuer but also includes cryptocurrencies in the lack of a more specific description.
According to this arrangement, DFA receipts can be exchanged as securities, according to Sergey Shvetsov, the chairman of the Moscow Exchange’s supervisory board (MOEX). The official said that the exchange “will inevitably join this market” during the most recent International Banking Forum and added:
The relevant law has already been submitted to the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) by MOEX, and the initiative will be coordinated with the Ministry of Finance as well. According to Shvetsov, the law will provide people who are hesitant to engage with distributed ledgers and who are concerned about custodial concerns the chance to transfer these risks and be allowed to issue securities.
He said, “In order for DFAs to evolve, we want to suggest that the market itself makes the decision – blockchain accounting or depositary accounting,” noting that the Moscow Exchange also wishes to seek a license from the CBR in order to function as a digital asset exchange. By the end of the year, MOEX plans to provide a DFA-based solution, as it stated in August.
If such a regulation is passed, Russian depositories would be able to amass DFAs on their blockchain accounts and provide receipts to their clients in exchange for them. Customers would cancel the receipt and obtain their digital assets on their blockchain accounts as soon as they needed the underlying item, according to Shvetsov, who was quoted by the Prime business news agency.
In Moscow, there has been an increase in support for allowing the use of digital assets like cryptocurrencies for international settlements in the face of sanctions, but it is still unknown if regulators would legalize their unrestricted usage domestically. In any event, the chairman of the legislative Financial Market Committee believes that Russia has to develop its own cryptocurrency infrastructure. The stock markets in Moscow and Saint Petersburg are prepared to supply it, according to recent comments made by Anatoly Aksakov.
