- Nornickel, a Russian metals firm, will be making use of digital tokens for the sale of metals
- The new platform is due to launch in 2019
The blockchain industry in Russia has seen great progress in the last year as the State Duma, the Russian parliament has been working on implementing concrete blockchain and crypto related regulations following an order by president Vladimir Putin to do so.
Now it seems that the public sector is not the only way in which blockchain and crypto has seen progress in Russia as it has been announced on July 9, 2019 that Nornickel, a Russian mining and smelting giant, is going to roll out a digital platform that will enable the trading of metals by the end of this year that will also make use of digital tokens.
Metals and Crypto
According to the report, a platform will be created in which metal trading will be digitized and will be facilitated through the use of digital tokens which has become a tool of choice for global trade as everything from paintings to real estate is being tokenized and considering the prominence of the firm within the mining and smelting industry, there will be a significant volume.
According to the vice president of Nornickel, Andre Burgov, the preparation process for this new platform is rather lengthy but it is believed that it will be brought to the market by the end of 2019 and the trading with tokens will launch as well.
This project is an ambitious one from the looks of it as Burgov has stated that the token trading program could be worth nearly a billion dollars and that is a target figure. He did emphasize that it is important to conduct market analysis so as to determine the demand for the product as certain factors are not regulated but depend on the condition of the market.
This is not the first time that Nornickel will be getting involved in the use of tokens for trading as in March 2019, their CEO Vladimir Potanin stated that he intends to deploy crypto tokens for the trading of palladium through a Switzerland-based palladium fund as well as launch several digital platforms.
It is not a huge surprise that a firm such as Nornickel would be interested in the use of tokens for the selling of metals as the use of tokens makes the selling process much easier as well as enabling market participants to sell excess volumes of metals to third parties with more ease compared to the traditional method that is much more complicated.