The Central Bank of Russia will tackle misselling in cryptocurrency sales: penalties are inevitable
The Bank of Russia has announced the launch of mandatory monitoring of misselling practices in the sale of digital currencies and related financial instruments. The regulator intends to strictly suppress situations where a financial institution sells a client one product under the guise of another or deliberately conceals key risks. This statement was made by Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank Mikhail Mamuta.
This initiative becomes particularly relevant in light of upcoming changes: from September 1, digital currencies will become available to retail investors through licensed intermediaries. That is why the regulator intends to control the quality of customer information from the very first day of legal sales.
What the regulator promises
Supervision over such practices will be mandatory, since regulation of the cryptocurrency market is only being introduced and is at an early stage of development. According to Mamuta, in the first phase it is extremely important to assess how honestly financial organizations disclose information about risks, rather than only about potential returns, and how well this process is organized.
The Deputy Chairman reminded about the filters already embedded in the regulatory framework: sales of digital currencies to the general public will begin with a mandatory knowledge check of the buyer through a testing system, as well as the establishment of limits on transaction volumes depending on the level of risk. However, as emphasized, one does not exclude the other. The regulator intends to closely monitor the entire process and punish violations, although it expresses hope that it will not come to sanctions.
Testing and limits remove some of the risks at the entry point, but they cannot guarantee what exactly will be said to the buyer at the moment of sale. Therefore, the Central Bank adds its own control over seller behavior to the formal barriers.
Context of the new rules
In August, President Vladimir Putin signed a law that for the first time comprehensively regulates the circulation of digital currencies and digital rights in Russia. The document establishes rules for the operation of crypto exchanges, digital depositories, and market participants, as well as defines the conditions for purchasing cryptocurrencies for investors.
The regulation covers the organization of circulation, accounting, and storage of digital currencies, mining, issuance, and circulation of digital rights. The scope also includes information system operators, digital currency exchange companies, depositories, brokers, management companies, trading organizers, and clearing organizations.
For non-qualified buyers, the regulator has set a limit: from August 11, each intermediary will be able to sell assets to such investors for no more than 300,000 rubles per year. At the same time, distributing transactions across different licensed platforms remains a legal way to bypass this threshold.
Industry experts note that the Central Bank's by-laws — testing criteria, registry procedures, requirements for depositories — determine the actual strictness of the rules more than the text of the law itself. Certain provisions cause disputes, for example, Article 30, which limits the circle of persons entitled to provide digital currency as a loan.
Analytical commentary: The Central Bank's initiative looks like a logical continuation of the course toward institutionalizing the crypto market. However, the effectiveness of such supervision will depend on specific control mechanisms and the regulator's readiness to apply sanctions in practice. For the market, this is a signal: the era of "gray" schemes in digital asset sales is ending, and good faith will become not just an ethical choice but a mandatory requirement.