Russia Designing National Cryptocurrency Depository

Russia’s National Settlement Depository (NSD) is designing a digital vault for cryptocurrency called the Decentralized Digital Depository (D3), where institutional and potentially other large-scale investors can store their digital assets, making the ownership of these tokens regulation-compliant. The news follows an October 21 press release from President Vladimir Putin that instructed his government to draft legislation that will regulate many aspects of the blockchain space. A week earlier, Russian communications and mass media minister Nikolai Nikiforov had declared the nation’s intention to issue a state-backed cryptocurrency.

NSD Director Artem Duvanov said that D3 will operate in accordance with know your customer and anti-money laundering codes by collecting the requisite personal information from token holders. While the NSD has yet to select the blockchain environment upon which they will build the depository, D3’s designers are reportedly interested in endowing it with the capacity to support all cryptocurrencies.

Alexander Yakovlev, the NSD’s head of decentralized solutions, suggested that the platform may also serve as a cryptocurrency bank. Along these lines, the depository’s developers will strive to make it compatible with ISO 20022, the messaging standard used by international financial messaging service provider Swift as well as a wide range of other entities that engage in high-value exchanges.

Additionally, The NSD is considering the possibility that D3 could double as a platform that would host annual general meetings, in which digital asset holders could vote on matters pertaining to the blockchain-based organizations that issued their tokens. In 2016, the government body announced that it had conducted a trial of a blockchain system that enables such voting.

Though the idea for D3 was first made public in August 2017, its name and the fact that it is actively being designed were only revealed after Putin’s October press release.