The rise of reliable Russian cryptocurrency companies will allow participants of the Russian and foreign markets to base their future work on proven organisations and minimise the risks of fraud in the creation and development of businesses in the fields of mining, cryptocurrency trade, and blockchain technology.
Let’s take a closer look at three crypto companies currently leading the way in Russia.
Crypto companies in Russia
The Russian Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain (RAKIB) has created a register of companies that offer products or services that are linked to cryptocurrency. The association has explained that the registry “consists solely of organisations that have undergone a voluntary reliability check”.
The criteria for the reliability check includes “financial sustainability, experience and goodwill, lack of court decisions, the availability of licenses and certificates (if necessary), and the absence of arrears in taxes and fees”.
Since the beginning of 2018, Russian citizens and companies have lost about 270 million rubles from investments in cryptocurrency projects organised by scammers and unqualified teams.
The RAKIB was then set up and began to monitor initial coin offerings (ICOs) and publish a list of projects that can be trusted. The association believes that this will help future investors save their money.
The following are three of the most popular and prevalent cryptocurrency companies currently operating in Russia.
Yandex
Yandex is a search engine and IT company that develops various services for Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Turkey. It is a Russian multinational corporation specialising in internet-related products and services, including search and information services, eCommerce, transportation, navigation, mobile applications, and online advertising.
The company has 18 commercial offices worldwide. It is the largest technology company in Russia and the largest Russian-language search engine on the internet, with a market share of over 52%.
The Yandex.ru home page is the fourth most popular website in Russia. It also has the largest market share of any search engine in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and is the fifth largest search engine worldwide after Google, Baidu, Bing, and Yahoo.Yandex’s main competitors on the Russian market are Google, Mail.ru, and Rambler.
According to the company, one of its biggest advantages for Russian-language users is the ability to recognise Russian inflections in search queries.
Yandex.Money is a payment service that has also gained popularity among Russian-speaking internet users. Yandex.Money is Russia’s largest electronic payment service according to a 2016 survey by TNS. The service announced its readiness to support cryptocurrency in July 2017.
However, Yandex does not support the direct sale and purchase of cryptocurrencies. The management is waiting for the Russian government to recognise digital currencies as legitimate before it offers this service. But despite this, it is still possible to exchange cryptocurrency using Yandex.
QIWI Group
QIWI Group is a Russian payment service. It provides payment and financial services in Russia and the CIS countries and owns an integrated payment network that allows you to make payments via mobile, online, and offline channels.
The network includes over 20.3 million virtual wallets and more than 149,000 terminals and payment acceptance points. QIWI customers can use cash, prepaid cards, and other cashless payment methods to pay for goods and services or make money transfers.
The CEO and largest shareholder of QIWI is Sergey Solonin. Solonin is an investor in Pavel Durov’s upcoming TON blockchain platform.
QIWI was one of the first companies in Russia to introduce blockchain technology into its business. In 2015, the company announced the creation of its own distributed payment processing system based on distributed ledger technology (DLT).
In 2017, QIWI launched a subsidiary company focusing solely on blockchain and DLT technologies called QIWI Blockchain Technologies (QBT). In its first year, QBT planned to spend 100 million rubles on operational activities.
Among the first stated goals of QBT was the development and implementation of DLT technologies into the QIWI payment system, as well as the development of blockchain-based solutions for external customers.
Currently, the company identifies three main areas of work: auditing IT systems, developing projects for building distributed systems and blockchain solutions, and ICO consulting.
QBT is a member of the leading consortia and bloc association R3 as well as the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) and FinTech Association (AFT). QBT specialists are also among the leading consultants in the development of Masterchain – the Russian national blockchain network.
WebMoney
WebMoney is an electronic settlement system founded in Russia in 1998. WebMoney is not registered as an electronic payment system in Russia as it uses special accounting units called “title units” to transfer money, which are nominated in relation to different currencies and gold.
As of January 2019, the number of registrations on the WebMoney system exceeded 38 million accounts. In 2014, according to WebMoney internal statistics, the number of transactions on the system amounted to more than 160 million with a volume of more than a billion dollars.
According to the results of the e-Finance User Index study conducted in 2014, 34.4% of Runet users used WebMoney wallets. According to Mediascope, in 2018, WebMoney wallets were used by 38.9% of Russians who made purchases on the internet.
On the WebMoney site, you will find instructions on how to buy any cryptocurrency and how to exchange it.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.