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Russia has integrated the use of digital assets as payment for international transactions in its legislation. President Vladimir Putin signed into law a document that describes using these assets as payment for international settlements, a use case not contemplated in any law, appointing the Central Bank of Russia as the overseer of these transactions.
Russia is expanding its legislation to contemplate more use cases for financial digital assets. On March 11, President Vladimir Putin signed into law a series of amendments that regulate the use of digital assets for international payments, an application not contemplated before in any law.
The law establishes that the Central Bank of Russia will have oversight over these operations, being able to set conditions for these exchanges and ban some. In the same way, the law includes transactions between a resident and a non-resident, and between two non-residents on the purchase or sale of digital assets.
Local media stated these measures might be directed to solve current and upcoming payment problems derived from the economic sanctions applied to Russia. Russia had profiled the use of digital assets for making payments not affected by these sanctions, but no regulation supported this utilization.
The promulgation of this law comes after several statements from Russian officials that touched on the subject of using blockchain and central bank digital currencies (CBDC) as a base for a payment system for the BRICS bloc. The group, chaired by Russia and integrated by Brazil, India, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iran, Egypt, and Ethiopia, would be planning to use these assets to develop a “cost-effective and free of politics” payments alternative.
Russia and China, two of the most prominent economies of the bloc, are already experimenting with CBDCs, the former with its digital ruble pilot, and the latter with the digital yuan, a currency already circulating.
