Russia & Iran may launch gold-backed stablecoin: Report

Reportedly, Russia & Iran are working to create a gold-backed token payment system, to bypass the need for an international payment system.

In late Feb 2022, Russia vs Ukraine conflict started, as a part of their geopolitical drama. On one side Ukraine faced loss in almost every aspect, on the other hand, Russia faced political pressure from other countries. Many big countries like the US, and the UK imposed international trade sanctions on Russia, to reduce the war efforts from the Russian military. Because of multiple sanctions, the Russian economy plunged badly. 

On 16 Jan 2023, Russian local news media Vedomosti reported that Iran & Russian government agencies are working on a project to launch the “token of the Persian Gulf.” As a part of this project, they aimed to launch Gold-backed tokens, or say stablecoins, so that both of these countries can process international payments easily. 

So basically, both of these two countries are willing to go with those payment models, which existed before the 20th century.

Anton Tkachev, a member of the Duma Committee on Information Policy, confirmed all such reports and said that negotiations are going on with Iran and it will be only possible to implement Gold backed tokens after the full regulation of the Crypto sector in the Russian Federation.

Russia’s stance on Crypto 

From the very beginning, Russia was against Crypto adoption. In Jan 2021, Russia introduced its Crypto bill to legalise crypto investment in the country and also announced that Crypto payment is prohibited & can’t be used in the payment system but the government did nothing to prohibit crypto payment. Many Crypto proponents claim that Russia did nothing for the Crypto sector because the regulation system was not covering the whole market.

In late 2021, the Russian Central Bank proposed the idea of a blanket ban on cryptocurrencies but later Russia vs Ukraine conflict changed the whole game. And now Russian government agencies are looking to find out ways to bypass international financial sanctions with the help of the Crypto & blockchain industry.

Read also: Japanese regulator wants Bank like strict laws on Crypto