T-Bank, formerly known as Tinkoff Bank, a major Russian banking institution, has announced its foray into the blockchain sector with the launch of a new suite of token-based “investment” instruments powered by blockchain technology.
According to RBC, the bank has made its official entry into the digital financial assets (DFA) market with these innovative offerings. T-Bank confirmed that its new products, along with a comprehensive infrastructure for trading blockchain-based tokens, should be available to retail investors as early as the beginning of 2025.
T-Bank is collaborating with Atomyze, a Moscow-based company backed by Norilsk Nickel, a leading Russian mining giant with a strong interest in blockchain. Earlier this year, the bank aired marketing materials on Russian television to promote its new blockchain initiatives. The Russian Central Bank granted T-Bank permission to launch digital financial assets in March of this year.
In recent months, other major banks, such as Sberbank and Alfa-Bank, have also moved into the DFA market, signaling a growing trend in the Russian financial industry.
T-Bank has stated that its premium customers will be able to access and trade DFAs before the end of this year, with a broader rollout planned for early 2025. These new offerings are referred to as “smart assets” and are powered by blockchain technology and automated smart contracts. This innovation allows T-Bank to “reduce costs and create fundamentally new products” that are not yet available in traditional financial markets. The bank also emphasized that investors will have access to a fully functional secondary market with liquidity provided by market makers.
Understanding Russian DFAs
In Russia, digital financial assets (DFAs) refer to tokenized versions of traditional financial and physical assets. Unlike real-world assets (RWAs), DFAs do not operate on public blockchain networks. Instead, they are issued and managed on private blockchains, regulated by the Central Bank of Russia.
T-Bank’s initial DFA range includes eight pilot instruments, offering a potential annual yield of up to 27.5%. These products will be issued on the Atomyze platform. It’s worth noting that both Atomyze and another DFA issuer, Lighthouse, were added to the US sanctions list earlier this year.
The new DFA offerings from T-Bank include:
- Loan Products
- Smart Factoring Portfolio: Linked to the financial obligations of small and medium-sized Russian businesses.
- Smart Floater: A bond with a floating interest rate that promises to be “always 2.5% higher than the key rate.”
- Art Tokens: These tokens grant investors digital rights to income generated from the sale of contemporary art.
- Scholarship Tokens: Used to fund scholarships for top university students.
Growing the DFA Market
Atomyze CEO Alexey Ilyasov has stated that the platform aims to expand the DFA market, reaching “hundreds of thousands of investors” by mid-2025.
T-Bank, which was founded in 2006 by Oleg Tinkov, a prominent Russian entrepreneur, is the largest neobank in Russia. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Tinkov has been in exile, renounced his Russian citizenship, and was labeled a “foreign agent” by Moscow earlier this year.
In June, the bank announced it would rebrand as T-Bank, a decision that its executives described as a “logical step” for both employees and customers. Despite the name change, the bank assured its 43 million customers that “it’s business as usual.
