The Russian central bank is exploring the possibility of a national digital currency, the bank’s senior official said last week, TASS reported.

Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2017, Olga Skorobogatova, deputy chief of the Bank of Russia, said:

"Regulators of all countries agree that it’s time to develop national cryptocurrencies, this is the future. Every country will decide on specific time frames. After our pilot projects we will understand what system we could use in our case for our national currency.”

Skorobogatova hinted at such possibility earlier in April 2016 when she said that national digital currency is a feasible application of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in the Russian financial market.

The Bank of Russia has been actively involved in the blockchain space for quite some time now. It set up a Working Group last year on the analysis of advanced technologies and innovations in the financial market, with focus on the study of distributed technologies such as blockchain, and other payment technologies. In October 2016, the bank developed a technical prototype – Masterchain – for financial messaging, based on the DLT. Moreover, it also approved the decision to set up an Association for Financial Technologies Development (FinTech Association) in December 2016.

Skorobogatova expects blockchain technology to be massively launched in Russia in next 7-10 years.

"I think it will take us 7-10 years - not only the financial sector, but other sectors as well - to launch the production of this technology for serious projects," she said, and added “We want to jointly test blockchain for cooperating with EU countries on the projects we’re going to start this year”.