Compass Investments

– The Central Bank of Russia intends to introduce tokenization technologies to open access to shares of Russian companies for foreign buyers.

Russian publication RBC reported that domestic industry insiders believe the blockchain solution is feasible and attractive for foreign investors.

Vladimir Chistyukhin, first deputy chairman of the Central Bank, made this point in an informal conversation at a recent financial forum.

When asked about the possibility of tokenizing Russian stocks, the head of the Central Bank gave a conciliatory answer, calling it one of the potential options.

Vladimir Chistyukhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia.

Chistyukhin noted that foreign participants will have to provide technical and platform infrastructure. He emphasized:

In this area, foreign partners will play an important role. I mean external structures ready to tokenize Russian assets to buy and sell them abroad.

Such comments by Chistyukhin followed a proposal by Sergei Shvetsov, head of the supervisory board of the Moscow Exchange.

At the end of September this year, Shvetsov said that foreign investors are interested in buying Russian shares and that tokenization can help them in this regard, as this solution does not rely on sanctions infrastructure.

Shvetsov specified that decision-makers in Moscow are openly discussing the possibility of tokenization of domestic shares.

According to him, traditional financial instruments, as a rule, use sanctioned infrastructure and sanctioned intermediaries and brokers.

According to him, this is unfortunately characteristic of Russia today. Tokenization, he said, is one of several potential workarounds under consideration.

RBC quoted an official from the Sovcombank banking group who supported the initiative.

The Sovcombank representative noted that tokenization may become a convenient tool for investors from BRICS countries or friendly jurisdictions such as the UAE, Kazakhstan and Armenia.

Sovcombank has offices in Moscow, Russia.

In the long term, he said, tokenization could accelerate the integration of the Russian market into the global digital financial system.

Alexei Korolenko, executive director of Cifra Markets, agreed, noting that tokenization will allow traders with limited capital to buy shares of expensive stocks.

Korolenko also emphasized that the real-world assets (RWAs) sector is becoming mainstream and is now generating increased investor interest.

He concluded that the idea of tokenization of Russian stocks is fully feasible. However, Korolenko cautioned that Moscow must make sure that suppliers meet reliability requirements all along the ownership and tokenization chain.