According to a report by Dlnews on December TechFlow, Sberbank, Russia's largest bank, is testing various decentralized finance (DeFi) products to respond to the growing demand from its customers for cryptocurrency trading. Anatoly Popov, Vice Chairman of the Bank's Management Committee, stated that Sberbank will "work with regulators to develop digital asset products" and believes that "traditional banking and DeFi will soon merge."
Despite its previous cautious stance on cryptocurrencies, the Russian central bank has softened its position as the Russian Bitcoin mining industry grows and more traders use cryptocurrencies as a cross-border settlement tool. Sberbank has also expressed interest in public blockchains such as Ethereum and plans to explore asset tokenization and connections with decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.
Sberbank reportedly has a market capitalization of approximately $83 billion and boasts about 109 million retail customers and over 3 million corporate customers.
