Speaking at a press conference, Olga Skorobogatova, the First Deputy Governor of Russia’s central bank has said that the bank would build a prototype of the digital Ruble by December this year. The virtual asset would be built using open source code that would be under the control of the central bank.
Olga said they are studying several projects with finished products but these won’t work for digital Ruble.
The idea of a digital Ruble has been on for a while now. It plans to bring other financial institutions and banks on board at the pilot tests. Digital currencies may soon displace SWIFT, according to some reports.
The digital Ruble would function under a tiered mode: the central bank will create wallets for banks for their digital Ruble. The banks will in turn open wallets for their customers.
Russia joins The CBDC Bandwagon
Russia has formally announced its plans to roll out a digital Ruble. Although no launch date has been set, there are no doubts about the project. They don’t want to miss the CBDC train as several other developed nations have already began working on theirs.
At the front if the pack is China. Other countries that are trying out CBDC include Japan, Australia and France. Beijing has already carried several pilots on CBDC. China is looking to digitize its economy and is looking at DLTs to make that happen.
