The law “On digital financial assets”, adopted in 2020, was supposed to promote the development of the digital economy in Russia under the control of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.
To launch digital financial assets (DFA) in Russia, it is necessary to comply with regulatory requirements and go through several key stages: an information system operator (ISO) is required, which is included in the register of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, for example, Alfa-Bank, Sberbank or Atomize, a check by the Central Bank must be passed, and investment restrictions for non-qualified investors must be organized.
The Central Bank of the Russian Federation has repeatedly expressed its position against cryptocurrencies, based on «protecting the country’s financial stability, the sovereignty of the monetary system, citizens’ savings» and preventing illegal activities. The regulator also offers a controlled alternative in the form of digital financial assets and the digital ruble.
What have the regulator’s efforts led to, and what practice has developed with digital financial instruments at the current moment?
Last week, the Novosibirsk network of car dealerships «Avtositi» failed to redeem the issue of digital financial assets, launched a year ago on the Alfa-Bank platform. The day before, the manufacturer of special equipment PC «Billion» failed to redeem the issue of digital financial assets for 2,6 million rubles, placed at the beginning of the year on the Tokeon platform.
According to experts, investors in these digital financial assets, despite all the protection of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, remained in limbo, since the problem of legal regulation of digital financial assets in Russia has no practice and no clear actions in case of defaults.
Despite all the Central Bank inspections and participation of licensed OIS in the issue of digital financial assets, investors whose securities have not been redeemed must themselves go to court or negotiate with the issuer for redemption on less favorable terms.
At the moment, the declared defaults of digital financial assets in the total market volume, according to the Central Bank, amounted to 512 billion rubles, that is, an insignificant part. However, such cases make one think about the degree of protection of investors in digital financial assets and about the difference between these assets and memecoins, the profit on which in some cases can be quite high.