Sberbank and the National Settlement Depository (NSD) are intending to test an initial coin offering (ICO) technology at the Bank of Russia’s regulatory platform.
Level One, a firm that manages Moscow’s biggest commercial lecture hall, will be the issuer.
The NSD will record tokens and carry out settlements related to their issue and circulation. Sberbank CIB will act as the issuance coordinator and anchor investor in tokens issued by Level One, and NSD will be the transaction’s custodian. NSD will keep and register digital assets.
The Bank of Russia’s regulatory platform was launched in April 2018 to pilot and implement new financial services and technologies requiring legislative changes.
Participants plan to conduct the first transaction involving tokenised assets by the end of summer 2018.
According to Sberbank, work on the pilot project at the regulatory platform will allow Sberbank CIB and NSD to assess the specifics of these transactions, mitigate associated risks, and get feedback from the Bank of Russia related to improving mechanisms to conduct transactions.
Igor Bulantsev, senior vice president of Sberbank and head of Sberbank CIB, said: “Sberbank considers the Russian ICO market to be very promising. Many Sberbank clients are interested in this type of investment, and we plan to promote this service proactively once the appropriate legislative framework comes into effect; we will be one of the drivers to institutionalise and popularise this type of transaction.”
Eddie Astanin, chairman of the executive board at the NSD, said: “NSD uses a pragmatic approach with regard to financial technology. Our end goal is to create the fundamental basis for the development of the digital economy in our country, for the emergence of a new type of asset for investors, for ICO ecosystems, and for the circulation of digital assets on the secondary market.”
He added: “In conjunction with market leaders, we are implementing a project to create infrastructure to record digital assets. The existence of this infrastructure is a crucial condition based on which institutional investors come to our market.”
