Russian Central Bank to Pilot First Official ICO

From Cointelegraph

Russian bank Sberbank CIB and the National Settlement Depository (NRD) will pilot the country’s first official Initial Coin Offering (ICO) using the Bank of Russia’s regulatory sandbox, ForkLog reports today, May 24.
Sberbank CIB, the investment banking arm of major state-owned bank Sberbank, and NRD, which is part of the Moscow Stock Exchange Group, are now finalizing plans with the central bank to launch the project by the end of summer 2018.

Sberbank CIB’s head Igor Bulantsev said that the bank considers the Russian ICO market to be “highly promising,” emphasizing that many of the bank’s clients “are interested in this new way of fundraising.”

The experimental ICO proceeds will reportedly be used to launch new tokenized online services by Level One, a company that runs the largest commercial lecture hall in Moscow.

NRD’s Eddi Astanin told local media platform Vedemosti that the project’s tokens would only be sold for rubles and be open exclusively to “qualified” investors.

I think you could consider Venezuela's recent foray into crypto, with their supposed petroleum backed crypto currency, a beta test for Russia's upcoming coin. Allegedly Russia was the one doing all the real work and development of the Venezuelan coin. I don't envision myself purchasing either of these coins in the future. In all likelihood using either is probably only aiding them in skirting sanctions.

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I do not really want to go political here, but for the world economy Russia skirting sanctions is a good thing. At least for all the countries that sold them things. Like the EU (that just obey the US for their relation with their neighbour ... ) for examples. The counter sanctions of the Russian federation are really bad for a lot of food producers here.

I think that what they really want is to get out of this 'all USD' kind of world economy we live in. Problem is the US cannot afford a big dip in the value of their currencie.

Going in crypto independently of their fiat war is a good thing for random people, we really need to get our currencie independence or we will die in a WW3 currencie war.

The main reason they are war in oil producer countries is because oil is traded in USD, and if it changes, the US will need a lot of oil to fuel their army to take what they cannot buy because of a too low USD, that's also the reason why we cannot destroy ISIS for good, because the US want Syria and Iran under their control because of their oil reserves, and Russia is opposed to that, so they can't go to war like ally against their common enemy.

If Assad was the real problem the OTAN could argue that they need a base in Syria to crush ISIS, and then stay there for years (like the US did in Europe after WW2). The free syrian army should keep quiet and wait for ISIS to be destroyed and let the Syrian, Russian and OTAN army take care of the real thread that are radical islamists, then the country will be under control of both OTAN and Russia as ally. Assad will have to act as a 'good' president or face war against armies that are already on his territory.