Russian central bank opposes ruble-pegged stablecoins

Published at: Dec. 2, 2020

Senior officials at the Bank of Russia have come out against the issuance of private stablecoins pegged to the Russian ruble.

Sergei Shvetsov, a first deputy governor of the Russian central bank, said that the bank aims to ban private firms from offering stablecoins backed by the country’s fiat currency. 

Russian crypto developers will only be able to use the Bank of Russia’s digital ruble, Shvetsov said. According to a Nov. 30 report by local news agency Prime, the he said that this approach follows the “philosophy of the means of payment’s uniqueness.”

Shvetsov referred to China’s digital yuan-related regulations that criminalize the issuance of yuan-backed stablecoins by third parties:

“China put a blanket ban on any yuan-pegged stablecoins. I think that we are not far from that. The bank will suppress everything that is positioned as a means of payment. We proceed from the premise that the ruble is the means of payment of the Russian Federation.”

Olga Skorobogatova, another first deputy governor of the Bank of Russia, underscored the technical difficulties of issuing a digital ruble:

She said, “So far, not a single regulator has figured out how to restore rubles in case the smartphone is lost, for example, but precisely due to the fact that [...] technologies are developing, we understand for ourselves that this issue can be worked out at the second stage. [...] Technologically, this problem will have to be solved."

The Bank of Russia officially released a roadmap for the digital ruble in October 2020. According to the bank, a digital ruble should become an additional form of money alongside cash.

On Nov. 30, Sberbank — the largest state-run bank in Russia — announced its plans to launch a new blockchain platform for trading and a native token called Sbercoin. Previously, Sberbank was reportedly considering launching its own stablecoin pegged to the Russian ruble.

The Bank of Russia and Sberbank did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

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