The head of Russia’s second largest bank, Andrey Kostin, is not a fan of cryptocurrencies, reportedly, he stated that these cryptocurrencies are the same counterfeiting. In an educational contest, he stated speaking to the media that,
“I am not a big fan of the crypto ruble. To me, this is a kind of counterfeiting. A person who is mining [cryptocurrencies] is similar to someone who is printing money. During the initial euphoria, everyone thought that everything can be paid in crypto starting tomorrow, but it hasn’t happened so far.”
He then added that these tokens will have a relatively small place in the future’s economy as funds are becoming more and more transparent and holding offshore accounts is getting out of fashion. Moreover, he stated that the tokens can be used for less than legal dealings considering that there’s no real way of regulating them.
However, the board chairperson at VTB seemed to disagree, in fact, the board director had previously stated that the VTB is ‘potentially’ ready to work with digital assets. Moreover, she was convinced that the cryptocurrencies will rise high enough to be on an equal basis with fiats.
Russia has a high demand for cryptocurrencies but the banks are not able to provide due to the lacking of clear regulations. Reportedly in a closed-door meeting, many major banks of the country expressed their interests in cryptocurrencies.
The nation’s legislation about cryptocurrencies which was set for March has been postponed due to the need for further edits. Though the chairman of the upper house of the country’s parliament pressed for haste, there has been no news of it since.
