Airdrop Army

So, Russia’s rollin’ up its sleeves for a new kinda crypto playground, maybe even a legit local exchange. November 13 saw a whole lineup of the country’s finance bigwigs and bureaucrats on the mic at FI Day: Blockchain, talking Russia’s digital game plan for the future. They were practically spelling it out—the motherland’s crypto roadmap is gettin’ real.

Sberbank’s Popov Drops Hints About Homegrown Crypto Market

Anatoly Popov, Sberbank’s number two, couldn’t stay off the topic. The dude practically laid it out: Russia’s ready to bring in a home-run crypto exchange under this new experimental legal regime. Talks are hot with the Bank of Russia, so they’re cookin’ up something for the miners, who wanna trade their mined assets without going offshore. Popov made it crystal—miners’ll have local options soon enough.

Then, he slipped in a little side note: Sberbank’s testing cross-border crypto transfers, looking at gettin’ stablecoins and crypto to start paying their way internationally. It’s all set to go down by New Year’s Eve if the legal kinks don’t trip ‘em up. Popov spilled that Sber’s hashing out the fine print with the Bank of Russia—first trades by year’s end are the goal.

Crypto Pilots Under Putin’s Eye and Central Bank’s Green Light

Let’s talk big picture. In August, Vladimir Putin himself slapped his name on a law, kicking off Russia’s grand crypto experiment for international deals. Central Bank boss Elvira Nabiullina’s got her team runnin’ the numbers. Testing could drag out three years, giving everyone time to decide if crypto’s gonna get permanent playtime on Russia’s financial turf.

With miners now legal since November 1, it’s their assets on the line for those cross-border trades. Yet here’s the kicker—Maxim Oreshkin, Putin’s economic honcho, says Russia might soon hit a wall with energy, as mining gulps up megawatts faster than expected. Some parts of the map could even see crypto mining bans, according to Energy Minister Grabchak—like the Far East and southwestern Siberia. Don’t say they didn’t warn ya.

Crypto Market Blows Up, and Sberbank Sees a $16 Trillion Jackpot

The crypto market, meanwhile, is cruising like a bullet train. Herman Gref, Sberbank’s big cheese, figures global tokenized assets’ll shoot to $16 trillion by 2030. He told the crowd that tokenization’s about to pop in Russia, thanks to all those fresh laws. This year’s numbers are already lighting up the board—316 billion rubles of digital assets just in 2024’s first nine months, blowing past estimates. Russians diggin’ in—3 billion rubles in digital assets are already flyin’ on the secondary market.

Now, here’s the tech rub. Russian digital assets ain’t your average cryptos; they’re tokenized real-world assets, strictly local and locked on blockchain. Problem is, one platform can’t talk to the next, making trades between platforms a mess. Enter Moscow Exchange’s Victor Zhidkov, who says the MoEx crew’s testing digital assets on the Finuslugi platform to let token operators bring assets together for smooth trades.