Digital Investment Equivalents: The Modernization of Investment Tools in the Digital Economy

Introduction: The problems of modernizing investment tools in the digital economy, on the one hand, are the subject of active scientific discussions; on the other hand, the legal regulation of new digital forms of assets remains fragmented and does not fully meet the challenges of the time. In the Russian legal system, two investment models exist and are developing in parallel: through undocumented monetary securities and through digital financial assets (hereinafter referred to as DFA). However, their potential is not fully exploited: classic securities are slower to adapt to the advantages of platform solutions, and the design of the DFA is de facto reduced to digital monetary requirements (“digital promissory notes”), without realizing the possibility of issuing shares or other complex instruments. The key problems are the technological risks of the multiplicity of private DFA release operators, the limited liability of these operators and the lack of a single trusted center, which is confirmed by the cases of defaults in the DFA market. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the need to consolidate the national investment toolkit on a single digital platform in the Bank of Russia system. Research objectives: to conduct a comparative analysis of the legal regimes of undocumented securities and digital financial assets as investment instruments; to identify systemic deficiencies and risks of the modern DFA market; to characterize the concept of a national platform for digital investment equivalents. Research methods: 1) general scientific: analysis, synthesis, comparison, analogy; 2) specific scientific: formal-legal, comparative law, system-structural analysis, the method of legal modeling. Results: 1) a disparity in the use of DFA types has been identified, which consists in the dominance of short-term monetary requirements relative to all other types of DFA; 2) the need to overcome the multiplicity of investment platforms through centralization has been argued; 3) the architecture of the national platform for digital investment equivalents is proposed, similar to the construction of the digital ruble platform, with the functions of the Bank of Russia as a regulator, operator, registrar, and registry holder. Conclusions: the author’s concept has been formulated, according to which all issued securities (stocks, bonds, options, Russian depositary receipts), as well as promissory notes, should be transformed into standardized digital investment equivalents issued, accounted for and stored on a single centralized platform of the Bank of Russia. This will increase the reliability, transparency, liquidity, and controllability of the investment process, eliminate cumbersome legal structures, and create a stable foundation for the investment sovereignty of Russia’s digital economy.