Comparative Analysis of the Legal Regulation of Digital Financial Assets in Russia and Other Countries

Abstract

Today, a crypto economy is actively developing throughout the globe based on the use of cryptographic technologies for the creation of new digital products, including the issuance of digital financial instruments. The topic of regulation of digital financial assets (hereinafter referred to as DFA) is relevant in the world: since 2019, some countries, including Russia, began to introduce legal norms regarding the issuance of DFA, as well as the sale and turnover of such assets on the market. This article compares approaches to the regulation of DFA in Russia and globally, including the issue of determining financial instruments that will be related to these assets, aspects of the procedure for issuing, storing, and trading them, including the basic rights and obligations of issuers and investors in such assets, and the features of the operation of trading floors and platforms for issuing DFA. In general, two approaches to the regulation of DFA can be distinguished. The first approach is the application of existing rules to tokenized assets (for example, laws on securities and financial instruments); this approach is used in the United States. The second is regulation through the introduction of a new framework for the application of distributed ledger technology in financial services, for example, in Russia, Germany, Luxembourg, the European Union (EU), and Switzerland. This article examines the second approach, which is currently implemented in Russia, to identify differences with foreign regulation, for example, the use of custodian institution for accounting and storing digital assets, converting DFA into traditional financial assets, and creating rules for trading digital financial assets.