Central Bank of Russia to Develop National Digital Currency
The Russian central bank will develop its own national digital currency, according to one of its senior officials.
Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2017, Olga Skorobogatova, deputy chief of the Bank of Russia, suggested that the world will eventually see nations create their own digital currencies. Skorobogatova also seemed to confirm that the tests required to prove the viability of such currencies had already been completed using platforms like the Hyperledger and Masterchain.
“Regulators of all countries agree that it’s time to develop national cryptocurrencies, this is the future,” said Skorobogatova. “Every country will decide on specific time frames. After our pilot projects we will understand what system we could use in our case for our national currency. We want to jointly test blockchain for cooperating with EU countries on the projects we’re going to start this year.”
In April 2016, Skorobogatova hinted at a ‘hybrid network’ of both public and private blockchain protocols to create a unified distributed ledger leading (DLT) to a national digital currency.
Speaking at the same event, German Gref, CEO of Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, said that Russia needs to legalize and regulate digital currencies as soon as possible.
