Russian stock exchanges are ambivalent about plans to participate in the Russian government’s Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrency trading platform.
This, in a context where President Vladimir Putin is increasingly giving further boost to its de-dollarization plan through various tools, including the creation of an official platform for trading cryptocurrencies and central bank currencies (CBDCs).
As reported by Russian media, the Moscow Stock Exchange (MOEX) claims that has no intention of participating in the new platform trading in cryptocurrencies, nor issuing digital financial assets (DFA).
Nikolai Trunichkin, head of digital projects and products at the Moscow Exchange, told local journalists about this.
“We are developing the infrastructure of a new market aimed at issuers and investors, and at this stage we are not considering other roles,” explained the executive, who also announced that the platform, positioned among the 25 most important stock exchanges in the world, will not participate in the government project.
The announcement comes after this Stock Exchange suspended transactions in dollars and euros last June. As CriptoNoticias reported, the measure was implemented shortly after the United States the sanctions package will intensify imposed on Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, adding this brokerage firm to the list of sanctioned organizations.
The position of the Moscow Stock Exchange It is completely different from that shown by the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange.which has already confirmed its plans to actively participate in the experimental regime for carrying out cryptocurrency exchange operations, the company’s press service reported.
The measure is taken despite the fact that – like the Moscow Stock Exchange – this platform has also been in operation since last year on the list of Russian companies sanctioned by the United States.
The director general of the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange, Evgeny Serdyukov, commented on this. confirmed who intend to implement a new development strategy, also focusing on the negotiation of investment instruments with settlement in rubles.
The idea was to involve stock exchanges in the project to develop a Russian cryptocurrency platform, along with a group of large companies and exchanges in the country, as commented by Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets.
The official believes that, despite the sanctions, the stock exchanges can be reoriented to trade with new instruments and work in the foreign markets of friendly countries. The list of these new products to be marketed included the securities of sanctioned companies, cryptocurrencies and DFAs.
However, after being included in the list of participants a few months ago, the Moscow Stock Exchange decided to take a step back and not interfere in the project with the new platform, for whose launching already progress is being made in creating a standard procedure which facilitates the inclusion of digital currencies as trade goods.
The reasons for the Moscow Stock Exchange’s withdrawal from the plan are still unclear. It is also unclear whether other brokerage firms besides St. Petersburg will participate or not, especially given that There are at least 5 other stock platforms important in Russia.
In this regard, Aksakov insists on the importance of not announcing the names of project participants to “avoid blockage by hostile institutions.”
An idea supported by Anton Gorelkin, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy and co-author of the cryptocurrency bill, who commented on his Telegram channel that companies involved in the project will have to work “if not until the end of sanctions, at least until they are relieved«.
New platform advances and CBDC project accelerates
It should be added that, despite their opposing choices regarding the incursion into cryptocurrency trading, the Moscow and St. Petersburg brokerage houses have reiterated their support for the government’s de-dollarization plan Putin’s policy, which uses various mechanisms to avoid using dollars or euros in international trade.
The position of these two important brokerage firms was announced shortly after the government approved a new legal regime at the end of July, which allows cross-border payments with cryptocurrencies and that legalizes bitcoin mining.
The regulations require the Central Bank of Russia to develop, from September 1, a experimental payment platform to start testing with cryptocurrencies as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, plans for the launch of a central bank currency are gaining new momentum. Authorities hope that the digital ruble will be fully implemented by the end of 2025To this end, a list of companies that will participate in the tests was presented this week, including Sberbank, Russia’s largest state-owned bank.
The CBDC implementation schedule envisages a series of phases for integrating the Russian digital currency into everyday life, as well as adding it to the set of assets to be used in trade with allied countriesmainly those of the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
