The State Duma and the Central Bank of the Russian Federation proposed to replace the reserves of the US dollar by a cryptocurrency

Russian commodity companies have appealed to the State Duma and the Central Bank with a proposal to implement in the country the concept of steylcoin – cryptocurrency , the value of which is tied to real assets. This was announced by the head of the Duma Committee on the Financial Market, Anatoly Aksakov, during a plenary session at the Yalta International Economic Forum.

Aksakov told :

“Serious Russian resource companies have turned to us in the State Duma, to the Central Bank with a proposal to implement the idea of steyblockcoins – these are cryptotools based on a real asset. And so, in the opinion of these serious businessmen, the stableblocks will just allow replacing the dollar in mutual settlements. So we are moving towards this. ”

Aksakov noted that there is no need to set guidelines for the time period for the refusal of the dollar in international settlements, but it is necessary to create conditions for this.

“Calculations in national currencies are growing, of course, not as fast as we would like. But, say, with China, they are already close to 25%. More recently, it was almost zero. In the Eurasian Union, calculations already exceed 80%. ”

He added that in Russia the structure of international reserves has changed significantly.

“The structure of international reserves has changed significantly: if dollar assets accounted for about 60% of our international reserves, now they are 22%. On the other hand, the share of yuan, gold has significantly increased – this is just the answer to the fact that sanctions have been taken against our country. ”

As he wrote, in January 2019, Bloobmerg reported that the Russian Central Bank, actively selling dollars from its reserves and “shifting” to other currencies, bought a quarter of all world reserves of the yuan.

The politically determined course of dedollarization led to the fact that Russia began to get rid of American securities, which were previously regarded by Russian financial officials as highly liquid and minimally risky. Already in the middle of 2018, Russia got rid of half of US debt, selling them for yuan.

The problem, however, is that in the same year of 2018, the yuan devalued against the dollar by 5.7%, so the dollars sold for the yuan supported the Chinese financial system, but eased Russian reserves by 670 billion rubles. According to Bloobmerg, the Russian Central Bank lost exactly that amount in rubles on exchange differences between the yuan and the dollar last year. The United States did not lose a cent.

Today, no country in the world has such a share of RMB in its reserves as Russia, because, despite the size of its economy, China remains a developing country with not the most reliable currency, which the yuan demonstrated in 2018.

As for the national steyblekoinov, tied to the real assets, which spoke Aksakov, this idea, of course, is not new. In February 2019, he voiced the opinion of the head of the Energia corporation, former Energy Minister Igor Yusufov, who is in favor of creating the Russian “oil cryptocurrency” .

According to the ex-head of the Federal Securities Commission of Russia Igor Kostikov, not only oil and gas, but also any resources that are exchangeable can be connected to cryptocurrency.

Oleg Abelev, Associate Professor of the Department of Economic Theory of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, agrees with them. According to him, from a technological point of view, Russia has not yet matured before introducing cryptocurrency for oil and gas into its calculations, but from an economic point of view, this thesis is not without reason.

However, Abelev notes :

“We run into the fact that digital financial assets in Russia are outside the law. But sooner or later, the existence of such assets should be recognized and the legislation regulating the life of cryptocurrency must be adopted, ”the economist is sure.

Publication date 20/04/2019
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