TOKENIZATION AND TOKEN: PROBLEMATIC ISSUES OF TERMINOLOGY

Abstract

Tokenization — a global trend transforming the financial market and payment infrastructure. The use of distributed ledger technology enables the digitization and conversion of asset rights into a machine-readable format, storing information about them and transactions in information systems. In our country, products designed with tokenization technology in mind are already being actively developed — these include digital financial assets, utilitarian digital rights, hybrid digital rights, and the digital ruble; the use of digital currency is also expanding. Despite this, Russian legislation lacks comprehensive definitions for the terms “tokenization” and “token”, and the existing definitions or mentions of these terms carry different meanings. This article presents the results of an analysis of the use of these terms in acts, documents of the Bank of Russia and the Russian Ministry of Finance, as well as existing practice: in the rules of information system operators for issuing digital financial assets and operators of digital financial asset exchange.