Recent progress made in streamlining trade in local currencies has brought Moscow and Beijing closer to creating a financial architecture that could facilitate transactions in gold. 

As we reported last week, Moscow and Beijing took another step towards de-dollarization with the opening of a yuan clearing bank in Russia. And earlier this month Russia's Central Bank opened its first-ever foreign branch in Beijing to allow for better communication between Russian and Chinese financial authorities. 

According to an article published yesterday by Sputnik, progress made in promoting bilateral trade in yuan is the first step towards an even more ambitions plan — using gold to make transactions:

The clearing center is one of a range of measures the People's Bank of China and the Russian Central Bank have been looking at to deepen their co-operation.