Russia's Sberbank offers custody services for Russian crypto assets

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia's largest lender Sberbank wants to offer custody services for Russian cryptocurrency assets, the state-owned bank said on Thursday, seeking a leading role in Russia's development of digital assets.

Russia's central bank has softened its opposition to cryptocurrencies, backing a law last year that let businesses use them in international trade to help skirt Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its conflict in Ukraine.

Anatoly Pronin, executive director of Sberbank's alternative payment solutions division, said the bank had sent proposals to the central bank on the regulation of crypto assets in the country after seeing more and more banks elsewhere start to provide custody services.

Speaking at a discussion on cryptocurrency regulation Pronin said Sberbank's proposals would see cryptocurrency assets regulated in a similar way to assets in bank accounts, and that the bank would guarantee tokens' safety.

Safeguarding crypto assets on behalf of clients means they could be frozen if law enforcement authorities suspect wrongdoing but can make the practice of carrying out transactions easier and protect accounts from hacking.

Gleb Zemskoy, director of the development of blockchain technology and digital currencies at Insight Finance, said no fund or crypto user could do without custody services.

"The custodian is the backbone of the world's economy in terms of cryptocurrencies," Zemskoy said. "And at the moment, it is in the hands of private foreign companies, which indicates a huge risk."

(Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya; Writing by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Philippa Fletcher)