At the Bank of Russia's Financial Congress in St. Petersburg, an unexpected initiative was announced: the largest players in the banking sector, led by Alfa-Bank, proposed creating a ruble stablecoin "from scratch" in a consortium format. Dmitry Vitman, Chief Operating Officer of Corporate and Investment Business at Alfa-Bank, stated that launching a liquid instrument alone is extremely difficult, so the market needs a unified platform on an open basis.
The main argument of the initiators is the lack of truly functional Russian crypto instruments on the market. However, this statement looks, to say the least, strange against the backdrop of the already existing and actively functioning ruble stablecoin A7A5. This token, issued by Old Vector (registered in Kyrgyzstan) and operating on the Tron and Ethereum blockchains, had captured 43% of the entire non-dollar stablecoin segment worldwide by April 2026. The volume of transactions involving it has exceeded $100 billion, and daily operations, according to PSB Deputy Chairman Mikhail Dorofeev, amount to about 50 billion rubles.
Regulator's Paradox: A7A5 Not Mentioned in the Central Bank's Report
The Central Bank, in its recent nearly fifty-page report on stablecoins, did not mention A7A5 even once, although it is the most prominent instrument on the market. The regulator maintains a strict position: the ruble remains the only legal tender within the country, and stablecoins are only permitted for cross-border settlements. The Central Bank cites sanctions risks as the main threat — issuers of centralized systems can freeze coins without court decisions.
It is this sanctions context that apparently makes A7A5 "toxic" for official recognition. British and European authorities have already imposed sanctions on structures linked to the A7 network, which, according to their estimates, moved over $90 billion in 2025. The project is accused of helping Russia circumvent Western financial restrictions. The Russian side, in turn, positions A7A5 as an independent settlement system for businesses affected by the SWIFT disconnection.
A recent case is telling: Russia imposed sanctions on 17-year-old British national Alexander Braude, who published a report claiming that A7A5 is backed by deposits from the sanctioned Promsvyazbank and is used to bypass sanctions. According to CertiK, the stablecoin has processed over $110 billion in transactions, despite sanctions from the US, EU, and UK.
Expert Opinion
The situation is absurd: while banks discuss how to build a stablecoin "from scratch," the most liquid ruble instrument is already operating and facilitating tens of billions of rubles daily. The disregard for A7A5 by the regulator and major banks looks not like a professional assessment, but like a politically motivated omission. If the consortium does launch an alternative, it will have to not only catch up with the existing product in terms of liquidity and coverage but also address the same sanctions risks that currently make A7A5 "inconvenient" for official recognition.