For the first time, a loan secured by cryptocurrency was issued in Russia

In Russia, for the first time, a transaction on issuing a loan secured by cryptocurrency has been registered, Kommersant reports.A loan to businessman Mikhail Uspensky was issued by Expobank, accepting Waves blockchain tokens as collateral.

Tanzila Yandieva, the head of the bank's legal department, said that the deal is "precedent in nature for both the legal and banking community."

A notary participated in the loan registration, at whom the tokens were deposited, which provided a mechanism for transferring the asset under the conditional control of the bank.

Waves tokens can be completely legalused in Russia, since they are not payment ones, which is prohibited by the law on digital assets adopted at the end of July, explains the founder of LFCS (Legal Support) Yuri Brisov

“Who and why needs loans secured by digitalasset? For example, you own a company and need to cover some operating expenses, including purchasing office equipment in fiat currency or paying salaries to employees. The company has two options. He can simply sell some of his cryptocurrency. Or get a fiat loan against cryptocurrency. Moreover, if the price of the cryptocurrency increases and the company chooses the second option, it will be able to cover all its loan costs and, perhaps, even earn additional money,” says Dmitry Volkov, technical director of the international crypto exchange CEX.IO.

The horizon for introducing cryptocurrency into bank credit products may be 3-5 years, he said.

“In principle, the legislative framework in Russia ondigital assets, although at the initial stage of development, are still quite friendly towards tokens,” says Volkov, adding that loans secured by cryptocurrencies can be issued not only by banks, but also by other “licensed organizations where transactions take place online and in a few minutes."