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The blockchain technology may be massively launched in Russia within 7-10 years, Central Bank’s Deputy Chairperson Olga Skorobogatova said on Friday.

“I think it will take us 7-10 years – not only the financial sector, but other sectors as well – to launch the production of this technology for serious projects,” she said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF-2017).

Blockchain is a technology of distributed ledgers based on continuously extended chain of records and resistant to forgery, review, hacking and theft of information.

The Bank of Russia announced the creation of a consortium to explore the technology last summer.

Cooperation with EU

“We want to jointly test blockchain for cooperating with EU countries on the projects we’re going to start this year,” Skorobogatova added.

In January 2017, the European Union’s Ambassador in Russia Vigaudas Usackas and ambassadors of the EU member-states had a meeting with the Central Bank’s Chief Elvira Nabiullina focused on the macroeconomic situation in Russia, the regulator’s monetary policy, the trend of the banking sector development, financial institutions and the national payment system.