Russia's digital ruble sign-ups 4X central bank guess, 220K can't be bluffing 🪙

More than 220,000 accounts were opened in the digital ruble's first month, a figure that dwarfs the roughly 60,000 the Russian central bank had forecast, Deputy Governor Zulfiya Kakhramanova told Reuters on Tuesday. The digital ruble officially launched Sept. 1, marking one of the first large-scale consumer rollouts of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and offering an early indicator of whether state-issued digital money can move beyond pilot programs into everyday use.

Russia accelerated development of the digital ruble after Western sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine restricted the country's access to parts of the global financial system and complicated payments with major trading partners including China and India, Reuters reported. The rollout comes as BRICS, the bloc of major emerging economies that includes Russia, China and India, explores ways to link members' CBDCs for cross-border payments, a topic also highlighted at the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi last month.

Separate Reuters reporting on that gathering noted that BRICS leaders backed efforts to expand local currency trade settlement and to connect member CBDCs, with cross-border interoperability repeatedly cited as a goal. India, also a BRICS member, is separately moving toward its first tokenized bonds using a wholesale CBDC, according to related reporting.

CBDCs have drawn criticism over concerns about government surveillance and centralized control of money. In the United States, a housing law enacted earlier this year included a provision barring the Federal Reserve from issuing or creating a CBDC through the end of 2030. The Russian central bank has not announced a similar moratorium, and adoption metrics from the first month will likely be studied by other governments weighing their own digital currency programs.