By Andrei Skvarsky.
Global consultancy McKinsey has said in a detailed report on the current state of the Russian economy that Russian banks are using blockchain on an increasing scale and has confirmed that cryptocurrencies are making their way into Russia.
“New technologies, for example blockchain”, underlie the creation of “fundamentally new areas of business” in Russia’s banking sector, the New York-based firm’s Russian subsidiary said in the report, which was written in Russian and presented at a news briefing in Moscow last week.
“There emerge new business models based on this technology, for instance blockchain applications for trade in various types of assets with the integration of cryptocurrencies, payment systems including systems for B2B payments and for P2P money transfers, exchanges and platforms for trade in cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based assets, and blockchain platforms for asset transfers,” the report said.
Russian banks apparently still have minimal exposure to crypto markets as Russia still has no regulatory framework for the use of cryptos.
Financiers are afraid that crypto-related draft legislation that passed its first reading in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, late in May will cause more legal and technical problems than it will solve when it becomes law.
McKinsey’s report did not say what share of the Russian banking sector’s total volume of business is crypto-related.
Vitaly Klintsov, McKinsey’s managing partner for Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, in answering a question from EmergingMarkets.me during the briefing, said he did not know any statistics to that effect.
According to McKinsey’s report, Russia’s economy has resumed growth.
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