The issuance became the bank’s second deal in the new asset class.
Russia’s largest bank, Sber – formerly known as Sberbank – has announced the first launch of a gold-backed digital asset (DFA). The bank sees the DFA as a “good alternative” for investing in the context of cash withdrawals. On December 26, Sber released the news of its first gold-backed DFA issue. A jeweler and developer, Solfer, became the first investor to secure a given asset. Gold-backed DFAs represent financial rights, the price, and volume of which are based on the price of gold.
According to the legal document of the matter, the bank will give up to 150,000 DFA to those who can invest to buy. DFA can be obtained until July 30, 2023. The document talks about “high risks” for investors, rooted in this type of asset, including “the risk of breaking the law”.
The first chairman of the Board of Sber, Alexander Vedyakhin, argues that this type of DFA is an alternative to investing in culture in the context of de-dollarization, caused by international financial sanctions, imposed on Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine:
“We expect the number of corporate customers on our platform to grow rapidly and plan to expand the product line of digital financial assets.”
Although the current DFA law came into effect in 2020, in July 2022 Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning digital currency as a means of payment. In June, a subsidiary of another Russian state bank, VTB Factoring, announced its first deal with a digital asset.
As part of the agreement, the bank’s subsidiaries received a share of debt from the engineering company Metrowagonmash, which was issued by the fintech platform Lighthouse. Sber tested his first contract related to the DFA later in July, offering a three-month property worth 1 billion rubles (about $ 14.5 million at the time of reporting).
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