Two of Russia’s largest banks to drive bitcoin and cryptocurrency portfolios

Sberbank and Alfa Bank, two of Russia’s largest banks, will offer clients cryptocurrency portfolios that will be trading six popular shares on major exchanges including Kraken and Bitstamp.

According to a Kommersant report the two banks plan to enter crypto trading by seeking help from Group IB, AddCapital investment fund, and the National Settlement Depository.
Alfa Bank is the largest private bank in Russia, while Sberbank is state-owned and is responsible for processing government employee pay checks.

Addcapital investment fund will be in charge of providing technical solution for the project, Coindesk reported. The portfolio will include the six most popular cryptocurrencies, together with bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin, and ethereum. In a year, at least four times the combination of coins will be revised and their proportions will be balanced by a trading algorithm.

Alexey Prokofyev, CEO of AddCapital investment fund said, "The investment process will see investors purchase a share of the fund as the shares are liquid and a client can send them for fiat currencies any time."

National Settlement Depository, which is a part of the Moscow Exchange Group, will be the custodian. The portfolio process will take around 45 days for testing.

Anton Rakhmanov, manager of Alfa Bank’s private banking branch said, “Our goal is to speed-up the recognition of the digital assets as legitimate financial assets as soon as possible.”

Ana Ivanchuk, Deputy Chairman of Private Banking - Sberbank was quoted as saying, “We’d like to offer our clients an absolutely transparent way to invest in digital assets with a full compliance with regulations that will let them invest in the product they are interested in Russia.”