The first Russian cryptocurrency project Bitruble has entered the prototype stage. The developer company continues consultations with regulators amid the growing risk of cryptocurrency ban in Russia.

According to Alexey Arkhipov, Director of Cryptocurrency Development Group in Russian payment company Qiwi, Bitruble is expected to meet demand both from individuals and legal entities. In addition, legal entities using Bitruble will be able to reduce costs of banking services: it may be more profitable for them to keep money in Bitrubles than on bank accounts, Arkhipov believes.

“We are in talks with regulators in order to determine the legal limits for Bitruble implementation in Russia. We believe that the project will be launched by the end of 2016,” Arkhipov told CoinFox.

He is confident that cryptocurrency in Russia still has future, albeit some regulators show their negative attitude towards this innovation. “It will not be necessarily bitcoin or bitcoin-like system. There are plenty of other cryptocurrencies, some of which can be permitted in Russia,” said Arkhipov during an investors' meeting in Moscow.

Those crypto-solutions that use a different type of emission, have a greater degree of personalisation and less anonymity have more chances to be permitted. According to Arkhipov, it is more likely that the main interest of Russian finance market will lay in cash digitisation, which has common points with cryptocurrency. This technology will allow banks and regulators to reduce high costs associated with cash operations.

Talking about the prospects of fully decentralised currencies in Russia, Arkhipov admitted that their future is “vague”. To his view, the adoption of decentralised cryptocurrencies in Russia is unlikely to happen in the near-term.

Arkhipov also noted that Qiwi invites banks to join efforts in order to develop blockchain applications facilitating inter-bank data exchange.

Earlier in March, Qiwi announced that, despite harsh statements from the officials concerning cryptocurrencies, they were no going to cancel Bitruble project launched in September 2015. But in the light of recent legislative initiatives from Russian Ministry of Finance the future of Bitruble still seems rather shaky.

Elena Platonova