Russian central bank to take “active supervision” on fintech

Today, a big economic forum was held in Moscow, with many influential speakers present. Some of them have direct relation to the future Russian cryptocurrency legislation. Naturally, Bitnewstoday correspondents decided to attend this event and heard there the following.

The director of Finance Technologies Department in the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, Alisa Melnikova, has stated that central banks of the world, namely, Sweden, Singapore and Australia, had taken the following position: they believe that a financial regulator should conduct active supervision on newest financial technologies. The world is changing fast and new technologies continue to emerge, and this is why the Russian Central Bank must create new methods of financial surveillance.

The Central Bank believes that creating more forums and events would allow fintech businesses to communicate with the authorities much better.

Professor Elina Sidorenko, who is the head of the government-backed work group that currently assesses risks of cryptocurrency use in Russia, told more on the anticipated cryptocurrency legislation. First of all, she told, criminal risks will be assessed during the creation of this law, but even before that, officials must have a clear concept of cryptocurrency written directly in the law. And there is nothing unnatural about this — laws always evolve and more terms enter it as the time goes by, Sidorenko reminded.

Another problem Sidorenko outlined is the boundaries after which a token becomes a full-fledged cryptocurrency. This needs to be described in the Russian laws too. When speaking on global problems, Elina Sidorenko told that the market cap is growing and cryptocurrencies are becoming financial instruments, and officials should pay attention to this.

Apart from cryptocurrencies, the Vice President of Sberbank mentioned artificial intelligence during the same event. Igor Kondrashov jokingly told he hopes robots will not replace every employees, although scoring AI and robots which create good documents might soon become real.