Prospects for the development of Russian legislation in the field of regulation of the digital ruble

The article analyzes the prospects for introducing the digital ruble into the national payment system of Russia. The reasons why the cryptocurrency remains popular in the global financial markets are analyzed, while attention is drawn to the substantive difference between the concepts of “cryptocurrency”, “digital currency” and “digital ruble”. The shortcomings that do not allow the introduction of cryptocurrency into the national payment system of Russia are highlighted. The author studied the draft laws on amendments to the current legislation submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in December 2022. Despite their generally progressive nature, the bills are not without a number of shortcomings. These include the monopolization of the circulation of the digital ruble, as well as the appearance in the legislation of similar-sounding terms (digital ruble and digital currency), which, against the backdrop of the uncertainty of the legal regime of the latter, can lead to confusion. It is concluded that the introduction of the digital ruble is a state reaction to the sanctions policy against Russia, as a result of which the use of other traditional fiat money is difficult or impossible. According to the results of the study, the author proposed to use digital currency tokenization to reduce financial risks.