Russia’s largest bank, Alfa-Bank, has developed a “digital financial asset” (DFA) supported by real money, equities, and gold.
A press statement from Alfa-Bank dated February 28 said that the firm’s new “tool” allows clients to “invest in four asset classes at once” using tokens issued by the bank.
“Establishing a DFA based on exchange-traded mutual funds was the stated goal of the partnership between the company and its Alfa Capital Management Company subsidiary.”
According to the bank, its Evergreen Portfolio product will debut on the A-Token platform. In 2022, Alfa-Bank received a DFA issue authorization from the Central Bank. In 2023, the bank introduced A-Token.
Alfa is the biggest private bank in Russia, and its start comes after comparable activities from the state-owned Sberbank, making it a big deal for Russia’s budding DFA sector.
Launching its “digital assets” platform for retail clients, Sberbank began the month of February with the use of blockchain technology. One intriguing feature of the site is its “NFT” component, which is currently in development.
This points to the possibility that Russian banks are planning to introduce non-fungible token sales soon. Along with a locomotive manufacturer and a large metal mining company, several Russian enterprises now possess DFA-issuing permissions.
Officials from Alfa claim that their platform is now the market leader in the country. CEO of Alfa-Bank and head of operations for large and medium-sized businesses, Vladimir Voeikov, said: “The A-Token platform handled over half of the number of Russian transactions involving digital financial services in 2023.”
Alfa already controls 45 percent of the local market and has 86 digital tokens in its DFA portfolio, according to Voeikov.
In January of this year, the business made headlines by announcing the successful conclusion of the first Russian gold transaction using “hybrid digital rights.” Alfa and Sberbank also performed the first interbank “parallel DFA transactions” in the nation in late 2023.
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