Russian Central Bank Governor Says Interest in Smart Contracts Rising, Hints at Rollout of New Digital Ruble

Russia’s central bank says that there is growing interest in smart contracts from the country’s banks, businesses and government.

In a new speech to the Association of Russian Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, the governor of the Central Bank of Russia, says that a pilot for the digital ruble is “going well.”

She says that a group of clients consisting of 1,700 individuals from 15 banks and about 30 companies are participating in the pilot and that an expansion of the program will come at a later date.

Nabiullina also mentions that there is growing interest in smart contracts, which is now a key priority for the digital ruble’s pilot project.

“Now we see interest in smart contracts from banks, businesses, and the government. The digital ruble offers many more opportunities for smart contracts, and we want to make this area one of the key ones, one of the priorities in the development of this project. All this, of course, requires additional discussion and preparation.

Therefore, our intention is to move on to the mass implementation of the digital ruble a little later than originally planned, namely after we work out all the details in the pilot and consult with banks on the economic model that is most attractive to their clients – for businesses, for people. We will be able to name a new date for the mass launch later.

I would like to emphasize: the project is ongoing, we will expand it both in terms of the number of participants and the range of operations.”

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russia has been partially forced to use obscure financial rails in order to conduct economic activity.

According to a  report from the Wall Street Journal citing “people familiar with the matter,” investigators at the Justice Department (DOJ) believe Russia used a state-controlled bank to move billions of dollars through correspondent US banks and ultimately into Turkey – disguising the massive transfers as funding for a nuclear plant.

A DOJ investigation found Gazprombank shifted $3 billion through Citibank and $2 billion through JPMorgan. The large payments triggered alarms at the DOJ, prompting authorities to block and freeze the $2 billion Chase transaction.

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