Kommersant reported July 28 that Russia's National Settlement Depository (NSD), the central depository for the Moscow Exchange, was developing a blockchain platform to provide deposit and settlement services for digital assets. The platform is built in partnership with Waves, the public blockchain project designed by Russian physicist and local crypto currency guru Sasha Ivanov in Moscow.
The platform would enable the NSD to issue a crypto-currency and "crypto-currency wallet" for banks, pension funds and retail investors, one which would also enable the exchange of those assets for paper currencies. This is supposedly slated to launch early next year, as rules and regulations have not yet been figured out.