Sergey Popov, head of the Transactional Business Division at Sberbank, explained how digital financial assets (DFA) are positioned to attract both investors and issuers, while outlining the investment risks involved.
He noted that there are no fundamental financial differences between DFAs and traditional instruments, aside from the issuance process and subsequent circulation, which eliminates the need for intermediaries. During the initial DFA placement, the issuer compiles the package insert themselves and makes it available on the platform. To draw issuers toward financing via DFA issuance, the issuance cost must be far lower than that of traditional instruments. While CFA structures differ in the issuer’s business model and revenue streams, there are no major restrictions on the main activity types, including lease payments, real estate, and movements in the underlying asset’s exchange rate. The primary objective is to build a system that enables issuers to automatically generate a smart contract by choosing the activity type on the platform and entering the standard data, making paper contracts obsolete in some cases, Popov explained.
Popov also highlighted benefits for investors.
He emphasized that a key advantage of DFAs is the secondary endorsement market, which allows the holder to transfer the asset remotely and without friction, offering high liquidity. While legal requirements on transfer may vary, Sberbank is focused on reducing investor risk by ensuring that comprehensive, reliable information about DFA issuers is available to investors, Popov added.
The discussion also covered potential risks.
He described distributed ledgers as a technology designed to maintain operation even if several nodes in the network fail. With blockchain, the infrastructure is sustained by a wide and potentially unlimited number of nodes, ensuring resilience across the system.
Regarding DFAs, transactions remain visible to members of a private network. In a private network, DFAs cannot be blocked by unrelated parties, unlike some public networks. Accessing a private network from outside the system is essentially impossible, according to Popov.
Popov concluded that over time, DFA exchange operators will surface and each platform will handle various DFA transactions. Sberbank plans to participate as a currency operator in this evolving landscape, he stated.
Legislation in Russia supported CFA developments when the State Duma passed a CFA law in 2021. The first DFA operators appeared in 2022, including Sberbank, which launched a CFA issuance on its platform as part of a pilot project. This trajectory highlights how digital assets are increasingly integrated into financial ecosystems, with potential implications for investors and issuers across North America as well as Europe and beyond, as analyzed in ongoing market reviews and expert commentary (Source: internal policy discussions and industry briefings).