Meet the Russian Oligarch Launching a Metal-Backed Crypto Token

As CoinDesk reports, “Vladimir Potanin is used to dealing in hard realities.

“The billionaire oligarch started his business empire in the Wild East days of the 1990s, when the assets of the old Soviet Union were up for grabs and opportunistic entrepreneurs could make mega-roubles if they were in the right place at the right time.

“The son of a foreign trade official, Potanin authored the infamous loans-to-shares program that allowed a group of businessmen to buy Russia’s key industrial entities cheaply, later becoming the richest people in the country. He went on to build Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel), one of the world’s largest producers of palladium and refined nickel.

“Potanin’s wealth is made of metal. But last week, sitting in a luxury New York hotel, his mind was on more immaterial things – like digitized tokens and distributed ledgers.

“Looking relaxed in a polo shirt and blazer, Potanin, now 58, discussed how to represent metals as digital assets (built with IBM), streamline his business with distributed databases (built on Hyperledger), and give investors new ways to participate in his business. He wants to get more Russian enterprises thinking about how to use blockchain technology.

“Potanin’s curiosity for blockchain technology partly originated from listening to Vitalik Buterin, ethereum’s creator, the billionaire said.

“A curious detail: an avid ice hockey player who is known for playing with Russian President Vladimir Putin in amateur games, Potanin once invested in a hockey analytics startup founded by a friend of Buterin’s father.

“While Potanin hasn’t met Buterin in person, he heard Vitalik speak about blockchain and was intrigued, he said:

“’The knowledge of what he is doing and what he has achieved, of course, encouraged me that the young generation is moving in that direction. I should be aware of what they’re doing and why, and I should benefit from this experience.’

“After learning more about blockchain he reasoned that Nornickel could benefit from adopting its principles, for instance using distributed databases for managing internet-of-things data from his smelting operations.

“At the same time, Nornickel is also issuing its own token, providing a new, more flexible way of managing sales contracts, Potanin says, and a new way for investors to participate in the company’s operations in Northern Siberia.”

Continue to read the full story at CoinDesk.

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