A loan secured by cryptocurrency has been officially issued in Russia for the first time, iHodl Russia has learned.
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The loan was given to a Russian entrepreneur Mikhail Uspensky through the conclusion of an individual bank loan agreement secured by the WAVES tokens with a Russian bank called Expobank.
In the process, an escrow mechanism was used, which remains the best way in Russia to quickly fulfill obligations to a creditor by transferring property in the form of deposited digital assets.
Legal and Financial Creative Solutions (LFCS) Founder and CEO Yuriy Brisov, who accompanied the deal, said that the WAVES tokens "can be absolutely legally used in Russia."
"There are no restrictions on the circulation of non-payment tokens in our country," he added.
Uspensky says he does not abandon plans to use WAVES and I does not see any point in selling the tokens.
"...the assets should not be the dead weight but should work," Uspensky pointed out.
While the cryptocurrency market already has dozens of lending products, including the DeFi services, Uspensky highlights it is extremely difficult to take a loan with the WAVES tokes.
The crypto-backed loans has been steadily gaining popularity over the past several months. Clear Hedge Capital, a lending group for alternative investment vehicles, earlier entered into a partnership with BitGo Prime to offer multi-million loans to institutional investors.
Coinbase also plans to start offering loans with bitcoins (EXANTE: Bitcoin) as collateral this fall.
The move will allow Coinbase to enter the lending space and become a direct competitor to companies like BlockFi.
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