Russian government-backed token platform Atomyze has released its first palladium-backed digital assets in collaboration with local bank Rosbank.
Rosbank officially announced on Monday that it has become the first partner of Russian blockchain company Atomyze, as an investor in Russia’s first digital asset deal with palladium.
According to the announcement, the newly issued digital asset is the first digital financial asset (DFA) to be issued through Atomyze. The platform obtained a registration from the Bank of Russia in February 2022, becoming the country’s first legal digital asset manager.
Both Atomyze and Rosbank are backed by Interros, a Russian conglomerate and investment company co-founded by sanctioned oligarch Vladimir Potanin. The CEO of the Russian nickel-palladium mining and smelter originally announced plans to token palladium back in 2019 through the Palladium Fund in Switzerland.
According to Interros’ announcement, Atomyze will serve as a key component of the Interros digital ecosystem including Tinkoff Bank, recently acquired by Potanin, software engineering firm Reksoft and Rosbank.
“This is a really important event. Russian companies and individuals have the opportunity to invest in this metal. This event also indicates that the Russian economy has entered a new stage, the “era of coding,” as the oligarch noted.
Related: Bank of Russia opposes country’s own stablecoins
Potanin also expressed confidence that Atomize-issued digital financial assets such as the token palladium will sooner or later replace cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), saying:
Unlike cryptocurrencies […] industrial tokens and other physical assets are backed, and the use of blockchain technology makes their transactions reliable, convenient and transparent. The token will defeat cryptocurrency, pushing it to the fringes of the digital economy.
While Atomyze or Rosbank refer to the new investment product technically as the “palladium token,” the product has the characteristics of a stablecoin backed by precious metals. “The innovative product gives Rosbank a cash claim equal to the market value of palladium,” the bank said in the announcement.
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, major global stablecoin issuers such as Tether and Paxos launched gold-backed stablecoins a few years ago.
