Two of Russia’s largest banks are now testing Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and more

Two of Russia’s largest banks are currently looking into testing out a variety of cryptocurrency-based investment options which will be targeted toward retail investors, according to local news source Kommersant.

Alfa-Bank and Sberbank will be testing out the incorporation of the cryptocurrencies within the Russian regulatory rules – the “sandbox” – for several of their products and hope to complete this testing phase in about a fortnight.

The Deputy Head of Sberbank Private Banking, Anna Ivanchuk, has said on the matter:

“We want to offer our clients a completely transparent version of the entrance to digital assets that fully meets the regulatory requirements that will allow them to invest in an interesting product in Russia.”

Anton Rakhmanov, the man responsible for managing the development of the product offer of the Alfa-Bank’s “Private Wealth Management” division, thinks that virtual currencies will be included sooner or later in the global economy and it would be unwise to ignore them.

“Our goal is to accelerate the adoption of a decision on the recognition of the CFA investment assets and introduce them into the legal field as quickly as possible.”

The banks are testing out six cryptocurrencies to offer on the platform, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. We don’t know the remaining two as they were unnamed, however, it was reported that that the chosen cryptocurrencies make up a total of “75% of the capitalization of all digital assets in the world.”