Fintech Digest: digital currencies do not threaten the financial system of the Russian Federation; PayPal found out how much gamers spend on games
Another week has passed since our next digest was published on Habré. The week was relatively calm and without negative, for which she thanks. But interesting news is still there.
The first news is the results of the assessment of the influence of the cryptocurrency market on Russia's financial stability. The analysis was carried out by an analytical credit rating agency (ACRA). Agency experts believe that Russian citizens have invested about $ 7.5–14 billion in virtual currencies.
In general, the high volatility of cryptocurrency rates in relation to Fiat still creates certain risks for the Russian financial system. Thus, volatility can have a rather strong impact on the economy through revaluation of debt and welfare effects. In this case, the depreciation of the ruble will lead to a revaluation of debt, which is denominated in foreign currency, which means that the volume of payments will increase and the demand for borrowed funds will increase and inflationary expectations will increase.
But in order for the effect of cryptocurrency on the financial stability of the country to be of any significance, the volume of virtual currencies in the debt structure of Russian companies must reach about 4 trillion rubles.
In other words, the share of cryptocurrency in the total debt of companies must be at the level of 6% or more- ACRA analysts say . Compared to the above indicator, investments of Russian citizens in digital currencies are at an extremely low level. Moreover, the interest of investors, and therefore, the volume of investments in the cryptocurrency sphere will gradually decline, according to experts from ACRA.
Another factor that will strengthen the trend is the Bank of Russia’s tough stance with respect to the regulation of digital currencies.
State regulation destroys the philosophy of an “independent cryptomere”, and high volatility, huge energy costs and the turtle transaction speed do not allow modern cryptocurrencies to serve as a means of settlement and payment, turning them into essentially unnecessary digital codes that are not worth incurred expenses for electricity and computer equipment- adds the general director of the management company Sputnik - Capital Management Alexander Losev.
Games and money
PayPal with SuperData conducted a study of the audience in the gaming industry. In particular, companies were able to figure out how much gamers spend time on one gaming session — about two hours 27 times a month. As for Russia, 72% of gamers prefer mobile devices, that is, smartphones. 66% play on PC and 59% play on tablets.
Users spend from 600 to 1199 rubles to buy games. About the same - on in-game items. As far as you can understand, these are the numbers for the month. About 65% of the polled players watch streams of games on sites such as Twitch. A few percent run their own streams, in some cases, this category of users can earn.
In the US, by the way, more than a third of stream fans (34%) are willing to pay for it - respondents reported that over the past 3 months they have spent more than $ 50 to support their favorite streamers.
Blockchain and bonds
And one more interesting news - Russian companies are increasingly beginning to place bonds with the help of the blockchain. As an example, MTS, which placed its own bonds on the blockchain platform in May of this year. The volume of issue of bonds amounted to approximately 750 million rubles.
But this was not the first, but the second placement of bonds on the blockchain. The first was the company "Megaphone" .
In the autumn of 2017, MegaFon has already used transfers using the blockchain - the company thus transferred 1 million rubles from the account with Alfa-Bank to the account with Sberbank.
According to experts, in the long term, the technology of a distributed registry can oust all infrastructure players and intermediaries from the financial market, ranging from depositories to financial and banking organizations. But everything comes down to the lack of an adequate regulatory framework. Technical difficulties that arise in the course of placement can be solved quite quickly. But with a legal ordinary entrepreneur can not do anything - to change the situation need the adoption of legislation.
And the last thing that can be recalled is that during the “Straight Line”, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia “cannot have its own cryptocurrency by definition”.
Cryptocurrencies are not secured and in the vast majority of countries are not a means of payment, savings, and settlements. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation shares this point of view. This suggests that we must treat this carefully, carefully- he considers.