Russia Passes Landmark Crypto Law, Setting State-Run Rails for Sanctioned Trade

Bitcoin Magazine

Russia Passes Landmark Crypto Law, Setting State-Run Rails for Sanctioned Trade

Russia’s State Duma passed a law on Tuesday that regulates the circulation of crypto and digital rights for the first time, a framework that sets rules for crypto exchanges, digital depositories, and investors while it opens a state-supervised channel for cross-border trade.

Lawmakers cleared bill No. 1194918-8, “On Digital Currency and Digital Rights,” in its second and third readings, the final stage in the chamber, according to semi-official Russian news agency Tass. 

The measure heads to the Federation Council and to President Vladimir Putin for a signature, a process expected to take two more weeks before the law takes effect. It caps a sweeping regulatory push that has moved through parliament across the year.

Legalization or taxation?

The law does not turn bitcoin into money a Russian can spend at the store. The ruble stays the sole lawful currency for goods and services inside Russia, the ban on crypto payments holds, and a bar on advertising that promotes such use holds with it. 

What the law does is grant crypto a legal identity and a set of gates. It recognizes digital assets as property, licenses the firms that handle them, lets investors buy within set limits, and clears crypto for use in foreign trade. 

In plain terms, Russia is not freeing crypto for daily life; it is bringing crypto inside the state’s fence, where the government can watch it, tax it, and steer it toward the uses it wants.

Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the Duma Committee on Financial Markets, said the bill was “aimed at creating legal conditions for the functioning of cryptocurrencies in our country,” and that lawmakers had “maximally” weighed industry feedback. 

From September 1, 2026, the Bank of Russia will license five categories of participant — exchanges, brokers, management companies, depositories, and exchangers — the spine of the new market.

Firms in a special registry may run exchange activity, with a grace period to July 1, 2027, before that requirement takes hold.  Such firms must carry minimum capital of 15 million rubles, some $190,000, and must join a self-regulatory body. 

The law defines exchange activity as the systematic purchase and sale of cryptocurrency for one’s own account outside organized trading, with “systematic” set at two or more deals in a month above 3.5 million rubles.

A channel for sanctioned trade

The commercial heart of the law sits in the cross-border carve-out. The framework legalizes what gray-market networks did in the shadows: settlement of foreign trade in crypto, outside the dollar-and-euro banking system that Western sanctions target. It hands the practice the Bank of Russia’s stamp. 

The same function ran through venues such as Garantex, which U.S. law enforcement shut down in March 2025, and through the ruble-pegged A7A5 stablecoin, a token that has moved tens of billions in sanctions-linked flows and that the U.K. has named in a sanctions round. 

Russia’s crypto pivot

Moscow has pitched crypto trade as a route around sanctions for years; the new law builds it into formal infrastructure.

The turn is a sharp one. In January 2022, weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, the Bank of Russia proposed an outright ban on crypto transactions and mining, and cast digital assets as a threat to financial stability. 

That stance held for as long as it took Western governments to cut Russian banks from SWIFT, a move that made trade in dollars and euros a harder task. Four years of infighting followed between a finance ministry that wanted crypto legal and a central bank that wanted it banned. 

Putin signed an experimental law in August 2024 that permitted mining and international crypto payments; Tuesday’s bill is the permanent frame that replaces the trial.

The law’s rules for investors and coins

For investors, the law splits the market in two. Non-qualified retail buyers may purchase up to 300,000 rubles of cryptocurrency, near $3,800, through a single licensed intermediary each year, and may send up to 100,000 rubles abroad. 

Qualified investors face higher ceilings — up to 3 million rubles for purchases and 1 million rubles for foreign transfers. Both groups must pass a risk-awareness test, and qualified status can rest in part on prior crypto experience. Tax treatment is set to track the rules for securities, with rates to firm up as implementing regulations arrive. The tiered design follows earlier steps that opened bitcoin access to retail buyers.

The law leans on monitoring rather than disclosure of every wallet. Drafters dropped an earlier plan to require holders to reveal individual wallet addresses; reporting will center on transaction volumes and account balances.

Large transfers to foreign or third-party accounts face a 48-hour hold, a window for authorities to review funds before they clear. 

Assets that clear strict thresholds may trade on organized venues — an average market cap above 5 trillion rubles over two years and average daily volume above 1 trillion rubles — limits expected to confine early trading to bitcoin and ether, with solana a possible third. Privacy coins that hide transaction data stay barred.

The main provisions take effect on September 1, 2026, with a transition period for existing operators that runs to March 1, 2027.

The passage marks another step in a run of Russian crypto moves, from a bid to make digital assets part of “everyday finance” to a crackdown on unregistered mining that carries the threat of forced labor. 

This post Russia Passes Landmark Crypto Law, Setting State-Run Rails for Sanctioned Trade first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.