Russia has admitted its first cryptocurrency exchange operators and digital custodians under a regulatory framework that formally brings crypto trading and custody into the country’s supervised financial system.
The Bank of Russia said on October 6 that five organizations had been entered into its register of digital depositories and four into its register of organizations permitted to exchange digital currencies.
Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, was registered as a digital depository alongside VTB Bank, Atomyze, Voltari and Cloud Infrastructure. VTB also received crypto-exchange operator status, joining T-Invest Lab, Zefir and Sistema-Crypto.
The registrations are the first under Federal Law No. 282-FZ, which took effect on September 1 and created a broader regulated structure for cryptocurrency activity in Russia. The central bank’s specific rules governing admission to the new registers became effective on October 5, allowing the first operators to be approved a day later.
According to the Bank of Russia, registered digital depositories can record ownership and transfers of cryptocurrencies and digital rights and provide clients with access to the blockchain addresses where those assets are recorded. Registered crypto exchange operators can buy and sell digital currencies in their own name and for their own account outside organized exchanges.
The first entrants were admitted using transitional provisions. They must comply with transaction and record-keeping rules immediately and bring their operations fully into line with the new legislation by September 1, 2027.
Sberbank Plans Bitcoin, Ether and USDT Access From December
Sberbank’s inclusion is particularly significant because the bank is preparing to place cryptocurrency services directly inside products already used by its retail, investment and business customers.
The bank said this week that it plans to begin with Bitcoin, Ether and Tether’s USDT. The functionality is expected to appear through SberBank Online, SberInvestments and SberBusiness rather than through a separate crypto application.
Sberbank is targeting December 1 for its first products. The bank had previously said the timing depended on regulatory approval and completion of the secondary rules required to operate the new market. Its addition to the digital depository register removes one of those major hurdles.
The bank has been working toward this infrastructure for months. Sberbank said in July that its planned digital depository would record customer rights to cryptocurrency and support transactions involving active wallets used for deposits, withdrawals and transfers.
The approach reflects a wider move toward regulated banks integrating digital assets directly into existing financial infrastructure instead of forcing customers to move between conventional bank accounts and standalone crypto platforms.
VTB is moving in a similar direction. The bank has been registered both as a digital depository and a crypto exchange operator, giving it a wider regulatory footprint than most members of the first group.
VTB has said it expects to make digital-currency trading available to a broader group of investors through VTB My Investments as early as November, followed by access through its own crypto-exchange infrastructure in December. The bank has already reported conducting initial digital-currency transactions for corporate clients.
Retail Investors Will Not Get Unlimited Crypto Access
Russia’s new framework legalizes and formalizes crypto investment infrastructure, but it does not create an unrestricted retail market.
Non-qualified investors can purchase only cryptocurrencies that meet the Bank of Russia’s liquidity and trading-history requirements. The regulator has identified Bitcoin, Ether and USDT as assets meeting the criteria for public trading.
Retail investors must also pass a knowledge test and are subject to a limit of 300,000 rubles per calendar year through each intermediary.
Qualified investors face fewer restrictions. After completing the required testing, they can buy and sell a broader range of cryptocurrencies without the same monetary limit.
The structure shows that Russia is not simply opening its market to existing offshore exchange models. It is constructing a controlled financial-market framework in which access, custody, trading and investor classification remain under central-bank oversight.
That is similar to a broader regulatory trend in which authorities are trying to define dedicated rules for crypto intermediaries rather than treating every platform as an extension of existing securities or payments law. In the United States, for example, regulators have also been considering purpose-built requirements for cryptocurrency exchanges, including custody and reserve-related obligations.
Russia Still Does Not Want Crypto to Become Everyday Money
The opening of regulated crypto investment services should not be confused with permission to use cryptocurrency as domestic money.
Russia continues to prohibit the use of digital currencies to pay for goods and services inside the country.
That creates a deliberate separation between crypto as an investable financial asset and crypto as a payments instrument.
Bitcoin, Ether and USDT can increasingly sit inside regulated investment and custody infrastructure, but the ruble remains the required unit for ordinary domestic commerce.
The distinction has become even more notable because Russia launched the broad rollout of its digital ruble on September 1, the same day the new cryptocurrency law came into force.
The two systems serve almost opposite purposes.
The digital ruble is a direct liability of the Bank of Russia intended for domestic payments and transfers. Cryptocurrencies remain privately issued or decentralized assets that the regulator continues to describe as high-risk investments.
Russia is therefore not choosing between state money and crypto. It is building parallel systems with very different legal roles.
The Biggest Change Is That Banks Are Becoming the Crypto Gatekeepers
This is where the new registers become more important than the number of companies on them.
Russia has had a large crypto user base for years. What it largely lacked was a conventional regulated route connecting those users to major domestic financial institutions.
The new system starts to change that.
A Sberbank customer may soon be able to access Bitcoin, Ether or USDT from the same financial ecosystem used for bank accounts and investments. A VTB customer could have crypto trading integrated into an established brokerage relationship.
That is a fundamentally different user experience from transferring money to an offshore exchange and managing assets through a platform outside the domestic banking system.
It also shifts power toward incumbents.
Compliance costs under the new framework include capital requirements, governance standards, transaction reporting, record keeping, custody controls and regulatory supervision. Digital depositories can face minimum capital requirements ranging from 50 million to 250 million rubles depending on the activities they perform.
Large banks can absorb those costs much more easily than small crypto startups.
The result could be a regulated market dominated from the beginning by existing financial groups such as Sberbank, VTB and T-Technologies rather than by the crypto-native companies that built much of the global exchange industry.
A Familiar Banking App Could Be Russia’s Most Powerful Crypto Distribution Channel
That may ultimately be the strongest commercial implication.
Crypto adoption is often discussed in terms of new exchanges, wallets or blockchain applications. But distribution through existing banking interfaces can be much more powerful because customers are already onboarded, identified and familiar with the software.
Sberbank does not need to persuade millions of users to download a new crypto wallet. It can potentially place the product beside services customers already use.
This resembles the wider financial-industry movement toward multi-asset platforms where different regulated products appear within a single interface even though separate legal and operational systems sit behind them. Dave Finances recently examined how traditional financial firms are building stocks-to-crypto platforms around exactly that convergence.
The Russian version may move faster because some of the country’s largest financial institutions are among the first entities admitted to the new system.
Custody May Matter More Than Exchange Trading at First
The first list also says something about where regulators see the immediate infrastructure need.
There are five registered digital depositories but only four exchange operators, and only VTB currently appears on both lists.
Custody and ownership records are foundational. Before banks can offer crypto broadly, they need a regulated way to establish who owns the assets, how those assets are moved and how client rights are recorded.
That mirrors developments elsewhere in finance, where companies increasingly see regulated custody as a strategic piece of crypto infrastructure. In the United States, firms have pursued bank and trust structures precisely because controlling digital-asset custody inside a regulated financial institution can reduce dependence on outside providers.
Russia appears to be building that custody layer before allowing the market to scale.
The Framework Could Pull Crypto Activity Back Onshore
The larger question is how much activity actually moves into the regulated system.
Russian users have long been able to access international crypto exchanges, peer-to-peer markets and decentralized protocols. A domestic framework does not make those alternatives disappear.
But regulated banking distribution changes the competitive equation.
Some investors will accept tighter limits, testing requirements and greater transaction visibility in exchange for dealing with a familiar bank and operating inside a recognized legal framework.
Institutional customers may have even stronger reasons to do so because custody, accounting and compliance are much harder to manage through informal offshore channels.
At the same time, the restrictions could keep more sophisticated traders outside the domestic system. A 300,000-ruble annual purchase limit through each intermediary is meaningful for ordinary investors but small relative to the activity of high-volume crypto traders.
That creates a two-track market: heavily supervised domestic access for mainstream investors and continued offshore or decentralized activity for users seeking broader asset selection and fewer restrictions.
December Will Be the Real Test
The October registrations are the regulatory starting gun, not the finished market.
The more important phase begins when Sberbank, VTB, T-Technologies and the other approved operators actually launch customer-facing services.
Sberbank’s December 1 target will be particularly important because it will test whether cryptocurrency can be inserted into mainstream Russian banking without feeling like a separate financial world.
If millions of existing bank customers eventually gain direct access to Bitcoin, Ether and USDT through ordinary investment and banking applications, Russia will have accomplished something more consequential than licensing four crypto exchange operators.
It will have moved cryptocurrency from the edge of its financial system into infrastructure operated by some of the country’s largest banks.
The model remains restrictive, and crypto payments are still prohibited. But after years in which Russia alternated between tolerating cryptocurrency, restricting it and experimenting with limited legal uses, the direction is now much clearer.
Crypto can exist inside the Russian financial system — provided the Bank of Russia controls the gateway.
Johan Shamshad is a financial markets writer at Dave Finances covering cryptocurrencies, trading platforms, brokers, fintech, financial regulation, and developments across global markets. He previously worked at Gulf News, adding newsroom experience to his coverage of fast-moving financial and digital-asset markets.
His work focuses on identifying market-moving events, company developments, regulatory changes, product launches, and shifts in trading and financial infrastructure.
Johan contributes news and analysis designed to help readers understand not only what happened, but why a development matters and how it may affect the wider financial landscape.