The main events by the morning: August 19

• The slowdown of YouTube in Russia has caused an increase in interest in foreign video hosting. Demand is growing not only for domestic platforms, but also for less popular foreign services such as Chinese Bilibili and American Vimeo. The number of requests for Chinese video hosting in the Yandex search engine has reached 140 thousand per day, although previously this figure was about 60 thousand. For comparison, the record number of requests on RuTube is 147 thousand per day.

• A legal cryptocurrency exchange may appear in Russia by the end of the year. This was announced by Deputy Aksakov, noting that the process of its creation should take place without excessive attention in order to avoid possible attempts to block the activities of the new institute.

• More than 90% of payments with China are made in national currencies. However, problems with payments are still present. Nevertheless, countries are finding ways to increase trade turnover and systematically get rid of settlements in reserve currencies.

• Belarus has coordinated 27 import substitution projects with Russia. The Deputy Prime Minister of the republic said that the total cost of these projects is 168 billion Russian rubles, of which 105 billion will be provided in the form of a state loan. 

• The merger of T-Bank and Rosbank is almost complete: TKS Holding has gained control over 99.4% of the shares of the credit institution. It remains to receive the remaining half percent of the shares: for this, T-Bank is preparing an offer to minority shareholders. The parameters of the offer have not yet been disclosed.