The experimental regulatory platform set up by the Central Bank of Russia has completed an Initial Currency Offer (ICO) sponsored by Sberbank, according to some inside sources. Ivan Semagin, director of Financial Market Development at the Central Bank of Russia, revealed to the news agency TASS that, despite having met the goals of the ICO in the technical sense, there were some obstacles from the legal point of view, which he did not detail.
Sberbank was the primary investor in the recently concluded ICO
The experimental ICO was announced in April of this year and carried out together with Sberbank, Russia’s leading retail bank, and Russia’s National Liquidation Depositary. The initiative aims to encourage the country’s financial players to experiment with such a business model.
The issuing company of the ICO in question was Level One, a commercial promotion website, while the principal investor was the corporate arm of Sberbank, Sberbank CIB, and the NSD was the custodian of the operation.
Sberbank is very interested in crypto coins and announced in January of this year that it plans to open a cryptocurrency exchange for institutional investors through its subsidiary in Switzerland.
ICOs are a promising business model, while cryptocurrency is a “harmful scheme”
The announcement of the successful conclusion of the ICO was made during the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), held in Vladivostok, which is an event held annually to strengthen alliances between Eastern Russia and the Asia-Pacific region. Both Russian and Chinese officials, as well as various media and journalists, were present at the event.
Alexey Chekinkov, CEO of the Development Fund for the Far East and Baikal Region, stated that ICO can bring monetary prosperity as a business model but, on the other hand, he deemed Bitcoin (BTC) or cryptocurrency, in general, is “a harmful scheme that wastes a lot of electricity in vain.”
