By Andrei Skvarsky.
Legislative gaps prevent Russians from pursuing full-scale cryptocurrency business, yet Russian banks have been finding legally safe ways of access to cryptocurrency markets in meeting growing client demand – Renaissance Capital, for one, sells traditional products that offer exposure to the crypto world.
“The cryptocurrency world is definitely an asset class but rather marginal at the moment,” Andrey Smirnov, head of Russian distribution at RenCap, an emerging and frontier markets-focused bank with worldwide operations, told EmergingMarkets.me.
A bill on cryptocurrencies and other “digital financial assets” passed the first reading in Russia’s parliament last week, several months after it was first published.
But unless amended before becoming law, the bill doesn’t promise much easier life to future crypto entrepreneurs as the planned law would slap rather tight restrictions on them and moreover, according to experts, there are legal gaps in the text of the bill that would need further legislation to fill.
“We do see some demand from our clients for exposure to this asset class,” Smirnov said.
“What we have done so far is to provide access to various traditional instruments which give further exposure to this asset class, including either derivatives or securitised products like notes, bond-like instruments, ETFs [exchange-traded funds] or equities.”
RenCap doesn’t plan to launch full-blown crypto business any time soon but is taking care to make sure it doesn’t miss the boat if any good opportunities come up in any of its markets and there are no legal barriers to making use of them.
“We don’t have any immediate plans. It’s not going to happen very soon,” Smirnov said.
However, “we do look at opportunities, and if we feel at a certain point that there is business potential in direct cryptocurrency trading we will get involved at some point,” he said.
“When and if we decide that we need to proceed with offering cryptocurrency trading, we’ll look at the legislation in all our geographies. We respect and abide by legislation in every region we trade,” Smirnov said.
“We will look at the full range of countries where we trade to find optimal solutions.”
RenCap does business in Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North America as well as Russia and elsewhere in the Commonwealth of Independent States.
It has offices in Moscow, London, New York, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Lagos, Nairobi, Cairo, Nicosia, and Dubai.
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