Moscow’s largest exchange, MOEX is planning on allowing companies to initiate initial coin offerings (ICO’s) sometime during this year, reports Reuters.
The Moscow Exchange is the main liquidity and price discovery center for Russian financial instruments. It trades in equities, bonds, derivatives, currencies, money market instruments, and commodities, with a total trading volume of around $1.1 trillion, as of May 2018, according to Cointelegraph.
The exchange is reportedly developing the infrastructure which will not list tokens, but primarily offer information about the responsibilities of token issuers. MOEX CEO Alexander Afanasiev explained:
“Right now we’re looking at this from the point of view of fiat currencies because cryptocurrencies don’t have the status of a legally protected asset. If they obtain that status, we will place them in our system as well.”
Provided there is significant investor interest, the exchange is also planning to issue futures contracts for ICOs, once that research on products and future types investors might require is completed.
The Russian government is reviewing cryptocurrency regulation under the Digital Assets Regulation Bill, filed 25 January. The bill defines cryptocurrencies and tokens as digital financial assets. If the bill passes in its current form, it would allow trading on cryptocurrency exchange operators with authorized Know-Your-Customer (KYC) standards. This would also apply to initial coin offerings (ICOs) established in Russia. The Russian Duma will also lay out specifications for interacting with crypto and blockchain-related technologies.
Last month Sberbank CIB, the investment banking arm of major Russian bank Sberbank, and the National Settlement Depository, which is part of the Moscow Stock Exchange Group, has announced that it plans to pilot the country’s first official ICO planned for a launch later this year.
Russia’s crypto space is beginning to get some traction during 2018 despite, President Putin’s past very vocal reticence and condemnation of privately owned digital currency, albeit it state-focussed. Just last month a prominent state-owned Russian bank Gazprombank announced plans to facilitate cryptocurrency transactions in Switzerland.
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