Russia’s Banks to drive Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Portfolios

By Sumedha Bose

Two of Russia’s largest Banks are piloting cryptocurrency portfolios for their clients, the Kommersant Newspaper reported on Friday. Under the guidance of Bank of Russia, SberBank and Alfa Bank will offer their clients’ shares in a special fund that will be trading the six most popular cryptocurrencies on major exchanges. These include Kraken and Bitstamp.

According to Kommersant report, both the banks, Sberbank and Alfa Bank will enter crypto trading with the help of Group IB, AddCapital, investment fund and National Settlement Depository.

Sberbank is the main state owned bank that is responsible for government employee paycheck and Alfa Bank is the largest private bank of Russia.

As per the reports, Addcaptial will be responsible for providing the technical solution for the project. CEO of Addcapital, Alexey Prokofyev said that the investment process will see investors purchase a share of the fund. The portfolio will include six most popular cryptocurrencies along with Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Ethereum. The combination of the coins will be revised four times a year and their proportions will be balanced by a trading algorithm.

Prokofyev further added “The shares are liquid and the client can send them for fiat currencies any time”.

Rakhmanov, Manager of Alfa Bank’s private branch banking said “Our goal is to speed up the recognition of the digital assets as legitimate financial assets as soon as possible.”  Ivanchuk, Deputy Chairman of Private Banking Sberbank quoted “We’d like to offer our clients an absolutely transparent way to invest in digital assets with a full compliance with regulations that will let them invest in the product they are interested in Russia.”

The National Settlement Depository which is part of Moscow Exchange group will act as the custodian. The portfolio process testing will take approximately 45 days but no specific date has been disclosed as yet.

Sumedha Bose

Sumedha uses words as her crutch to get by in life. She takes a keen interest in debating, dancing and destroying the patriarchy in her free time.

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