From April 1, the Central Bank of Russia will launch a pilot with 13 banks for operations with the digital ruble. The digital ruble is a digital form of the Russian national currency, which the Bank of Russia will issue in addition to existing cash and non-cash forms of money.

As planned, the digital ruble will perform all three functions of money: a means of payment, a measure of value and a store of value. The digital ruble is an obligation no longer of a commercial bank, but of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, that is, holders of digital rubles are freed from the risks inherent in commercial banks.

The pilot will take place on real operations and real clients, but the number of operations and clients will be limited.

The issue and circulation of the digital ruble will be organized using distributed registry technologies - the same technologies that are used for the issue and circulation of cryptocurrency.

But the digital ruble is not a cryptocurrency. The digital ruble is an obligation to its owner of a specific person - the Central Bank of Russia, while there is no obligated person to the owner of the cryptocurrency.