Mar 1, 2018
A very interesting exchange from a recent Russian newscast, showing to what degree the Russian elites are seizing on blockchain, and that they see it as highly important, right up to the boss himself.
Gref, who heads Russia’s largest bank and is very influential in forming government financial policy makes it clear that his bank will throw resources at blockchain to make it a priority to be a world leader in the space.
Then Putin goes out of his way to underline that he attaches great importance to Russia being a leader in this technology, even to the point of it being a national security consideration. He has often spoken of the internet and social media being a huge advantage to US intelligence agencies, and he doesn’t want to get stuck in the same situation with blockchain.
He ends by vowing the necessary support to put Russia in front of the game.Russia’s embrace of blockchain and cryptos has been very pronounced, far more than EU states, Japan or China, not to mention the US. You can see all of our articles on this subject here.
Transcript below:
German Gref, Head of Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia, and second largest bank by market cap in Europe.
The second technology is blockchain.
We don’t need any help here, except that we propose to add this discipline in the training of professionals.We will implement the technology. We need professionals in this field. And very carefull regulations,
that there would be no prohibitions, nor mentions about prohibitions.
Virtual currencies… has caused a massive transmission abroad of the datacenters that are dedicated to mining and technological startups. Caution is needed, but it is clear that we need legislation on the matter because this technology has an huge impact.
Putin:
I want to say the following. It is not the first time we talked about this topic. Among those present there are no, but other colleagues and citizens of the country may ask: Why do we need all this?
If we have everything. We have oil, gas, coal, metals of all kinds, ferrous and non-ferrous, gold, platinum, diamonds … everything!And initially our industrial sector is developing quite fast and production is growing. We have a good intellectual base.
But we need to further advance! This is what we need. And we have to work for this!
One of our colleagues, the former oil minister of an Arab country said: “The Stone Age has not ended due to the lack of stones, but because new technologies have appeared.”
And now new technologies appear in the world.
And they who are late in this race they instantly … I want to underline it.. In any case VERY FAST, will be under full dependence from to the leaders of these processes.Russia can not allow this.
And the most importantly, we have all the opportunities and possibilities to be up to date, if we use all the above factors.
It is important to take full advantage of these factors.
Everything I said, we will take them into account to guarantee this progress into the future.
