The Central Bank of Russia seems to be taking interest in the concept of national digital currencies. In the wake of the ongoing digital revolution, major central banks, such as the Reserve Bank of Australia and the People’s Bank of China, are increasingly showing interest in the digitized version of their currencies.

Speaking at the conference "Blockchain and open platforms", Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia Olga Skorobogatov has suggested the possible development of such phenomena as the national digital currency as well as the interest of the banking sector in the distributed ledger technologies, Forklog reported.

"As a result of our work we have come to one conclusion: blockchain technology, which is used in Bitcoin payment system is certainly interesting, but the distributed ledger technologies provide more exciting opportunities in the combination of elements not only in the form of chains and validation, but also in processing distributed stored information for simpler tasks " , according to loosely translated version of Skorobogatov’s statement.

In addition, Skorobogatov called a feasible application of distributed ledger technology in the Russian financial market to create a national digital currency.

"According to the rules of the hybrid network, most likely, will develop national digital currency", she said.

Skorobogatov went on to suggest the establishment of a consortium similar to R3 for the Russian market.

"Distributed technologies require coherence and understanding of each other and participants of how the one or the other system [works],” she said.

The central bank’s interest in digital version of national currency comes at time when the Russian government has been forging ahead in its efforts to criminalize the use of bitcoins in the country. Russian Deputy Minister of Finance confirmed last month that the draft law criminalizing circulation of bitcoin in Russia will be passed to the State Duma during the current session.

The Russian central bank, however, has been optimistic about blockchain technology. It has established a Working Group 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.

Skorobogatov has earlier predicted that the blockchain technology will be used in the global financial sector in the next two years.

"In 2017-2018, we will see real examples of the use of this system [blockchain technology]…As a closed system, I think, [blockchain technology] is the future, and we need to prepare for it".