Digital assets are put up on platforms – Newspaper Kommersant No. 29 (7474) dated February 16, 2023

Financial marketplaces can become a platform for the secondary circulation of digital financial assets (DFA). The bill adopted in the first reading allows them to receive the status of a CFA exchange operator. However, this path is not fast – the first operators of information systems have been waiting to be included in the register of the Central Bank for more than a year, and the regulator has not yet included anyone in the register of exchange operators. In addition to organizational obstacles, marketplaces will need to adjust their information systems, as well as withstand competition from major players in the DFA market.

According to the bill adopted on Wednesday, February 15, in the first reading, financial marketplaces may be able to both issue digital financial assets and become a platform for their secondary circulation. However, for this they will have to get into the relevant registers of the Central Bank – operators of information systems (IS) or DFA exchange operators.

Participants of both markets and experts reacted positively to the bill. According to Ekaterina Frolovicheva, CEO of Atomize, the proposed change “is dictated by the desire to attract additional liquidity to the DFA market”, since the question remains “how to organize the circulation of DFAs issued on one platform for clients of another platform.” Therefore, the path outlined in the CFA law is the emergence of exchange operators that will be able to organize cross-platform trading, she adds. As Aleksey Gribkov, Deputy General Director of the Sravni.ru financial marketplace, points out, investment products are “a logical continuation for the development of the platform market, and DFA looks like a promising mechanism.” In his opinion, the removal of the restriction on combining activities is primarily of interest to groups that already have a platform operator and an investment business. The Moscow Exchange believes that combining the activities of the marketplace and the CFA operator “will create the preconditions for simplifying the client path and optimizing the technologies for offering financial instruments.”

At the same time, Oleg Ushakov, the founder of Sagrada Legal, expects that not only existing financial platforms may wish to enter the DFA market, but IP operators may also wish to obtain the status of a financial platform and become a universal marketplace. In particular, Lighthouse CEO Denis Jordanidi confirmed that he would consider a partnership with the marketplace. At the same time, according to Ms. Frolovicheva, Atomize plans to organize trading through the applications of banks and brokers familiar to investors, although it considers rational “any market model that will be economically attractive to participants and does not contradict the spirit of the law.”

At the same time, experts also point out the difficulties of such integration. In particular, the process of getting into the register of IP operators took more than a year for the existing players. In addition, marketplaces will have to bring their own information systems in line with the requirements of the Central Bank or build a platform from scratch, says Kommersant’s interlocutor in one of the banks. At the same time, Andrey Ermakov, Director for Development of Financial Products of the OFM, notes that very large financial players have gained access to the CFA market. And on the one hand, they have ample opportunities (financial and infrastructural), and on the other hand, they have a wide client base. “These two factors can make it difficult to integrate these organizations into the marketplace, so the DFA market must first form, and then a significant expansion of its participants, which will already entail building a business model and attracting customers through operators of financial marketplace platforms,” he believes. . Mr. Ushakov believes that it is advisable to finalize the law on financial marketplaces. In his opinion, transactions there, along with consumers (individuals), should be available to legal entities.

Olga Sherunkova, Ksenia Kulikova