Russia and China take opposite sides on state-backed cryptocurrency issue

• The head of the central bank of Russia sees no benefits in issuing state-based digital currency.
• Her Chinese counterpart says China is considering the launch of such an asset.

There are no obvious reasons to issue a state-backed cryptocurrency at this stage, the head of the Russian central bank Elvira Nabiullina said at the forum of innovative financial technologies Finopolis.

She added that the central bank had been exploring the idea of creating a so-called CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency), but at this stage, there were no clear benefits in issuing such currency.  The central bank studied technical aspects of the state-based cryptocurrency issuance and tried to evaluate its advantages over the existing electronic non-cash payment systems. “The risks are platy, but the benefits are not clear enough,” - Nabiullina explained to the Vice Chairman of the People’s Bank of China Fan Yifei.

Meanwhile, Fan Yifei said that China was exploring the possibility of creating a national cryptocurrency. He believes that it is important to cooperate with other countries in developing regulatory standards for the industry. Ifei did not specify the launch dates for the national cryptocurrency in China. He said that it was necessary to do numerous researches and take into account the experience of other countries.

The State Duma in Russia approved the first reading a bill on digital financial assets.

The second reading of the bill with the latest amendments has been delayed numerous times as the lawmakers fail to come to the agreement on cornerstone aspects including the definition of digital asset.