Russia’s first stock exchange to facilitate trading in financial instruments based on digital assets by the end of the year

Russia’s largest stock, bond and derivatives exchange, the Moscow Stock Exchange, plans to launch a product based on digital financial assets by the end of the year. The exchange platform is already working with a partner to arrange the placement of digital tokens.

The launch of a digital financial asset (DFA) based product is planned for 2022, according to the Moscow Exchange (MOEX) in a recent interview. The announcement comes after a turbulent period for Russia’s main stock market, which faced market volatility, sanctions pressure and cyberattacks earlier this year.

With the “digital rights“DFA is currently the main legal term in Russian law that applies to various digital assets, including crypto-currencies according to some statements by Russian officials, but mainly those with a specific issuer.

MOEX is currently working with one of its partners to carry out a project to place digital tokens, general director of information technology and Moscow Exchange board member Andrey Burilov told the Tass news agency. He said that it was a real economy company and developed :

The main point here is to connect the company’s fixed assets with the investment market using digital technologies.

The digitization of commodities creates added value for market participants, Andrey Burilov noted. MEX aims to use DFAs to provide its clients with another investment tool that offers a fundamentally new way of ensuring information security.

Burilov also noted that the main challenge in terms of implementation is that it is a completely new product to the market, from regulation to software. Another challenge is its integration into the existing systems of the exchange and its customers, he noted.

In early July, the head of the financial markets committee in the lower house of parliament said that a Russian digital asset exchange would be best suited to handle crypto transactions in the country. Anatoly Aksakov also suggested that the crypto trading platform could be established at the Moscow Stock Exchange.